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Problems Vital to Our Religion 



PROBLEMS VITAL 

TO 

OUR RELIGION 




BY 

W^A. LICHTENWALLNER 



TImei-Mirror Printing and Binding House 

Loi Angelei, California 

1920 



A 






Copyright 
1920 

W , A. Lichteawallner 



OEC 29 1921 

©C!.A654070 



^ 



PREFACE 



During the year 1897, while the author was a re- 
porter on one of the daily newspapers in Milwaukee, 
Wisconsin, he attended a lecture delivered by Rob- 
ert G. IngersoU in that city. During his lecture Mr. 
Ingersoll made statement after statement which to 
the author seemed highly sacrilegious. What per- 
fectly astounded him was that these statements, the 
more blasphemous they seemed, the more liberal 
was the applause they received from all parts of the 
large and crowded auditorium. The author had 
been brought up a Lutheran and was then strictly 
orthodox. That night after the lecture he determined 
that if he would ever have the leisure to do so, he 
would investigate and study the fundamentals of 
the Christian Faith and find out for himself what 
ground there was for the attacks that were being 
made upon it. He then felt quite confident that 
such investigation would prove that his religion was 
solidly founded and fully able to withstand all 
criticism. 

More than twenty years have since elapsed. The 
author did not have the opportunity to take up this 
study fully till of late years. The results of his in- 
vestigation are given in the following pages. He 
does not hesitate to express his regrets that some of 
the beliefs he had regarded as precious and sacred 
from youth up, he felt compelled to discard. How- 
ever, the real essence of Christianity consists, not 



in the religious dogmas that were invented by man 
in times of superstition, but in the true and wonder- 
ful teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is true, these 
teachings as they were handed down from one gen- 
eration to another, could not avoid being in a slight 
measure modified by the beliefs and doctrines that 
sprung up in the early and dark days of their trans- 
mission. But we have not lost their value because 
of this. They were recorded, and from time to time 
recopied on new papyrus-rolls, by earnest and sin- 
cere seekers after the truth, so that we have them in 
the main, and for all essential purposes, as they 
were originally taught. 

This book has been written for a twofold purpose : 

First: To aid in awakening the church authori- 
ties to the fact that the church is fast losing ground 
because of its persistence in holding on to anti- 
quated dogmas. 

Second : To aid in awakening many thousands of 
our good and well meaning people to the serious 
mistake they are making to remain outside of the 
church simply because they cannot accept some of 
its doctrines. 

What first brought the church into existence was 
the purpose to reform the then prevailing religious 
beliefs and do away with all excesses. If reform was 
its watchword, then it should be so still. If there 
is need of reform, it needs our help. We can be of 
far more service from within the church than Ave 
can from without, 



The Christian church has been the greatest factor 
for good in the world's history. Our advanced civil- 
ization we owe to the church more than to any other 
cause. Each and all of us are vitally interested not 
only in its preservation, but also in being numbered 
with its active adherents. 

W. A. LICHTENWALLNER. 
Los Angeles, Calif., Oct. 11th, 1920. 



CONTENTS 



Page 
I. The Old Testament 7 

II. The Origin of Man 40 

III. Miracles 71 

IV. Jesus of Nazareth 115 

Chapter I. 
Jesus the Prophet 115 

Chapter II. 
Jesus the Messiah 123 

Chapter III. 
The Vicarious Atonement 135 

Chapter IV. 
The Virgin Birth 146 

Chapter V. 
God or Alan? 158 

Chapter VI. 
Conclusion 171 



The Old Testament 

Is the Christian religion a supernaturally revealed 
religion, or has it had, like all other religions, a nat- 
ural or human origin and a natural growth or 
development ? 

The so-called orthodox Christian belief is that the 
Old Testament, on which Christianity was founded, 
is the divinely inspired word of God. The accounts 
of the Creation and of the origin of man, as given in 
the Book of Genesis, are believed to have been di- 
vinely revealed to the writer of that sacred book. 
The Israelites were God's chosen people and God 
entered into a covenant with them favoring them 
above all other peoples so long as they faithfully 
performed their part of the covenant. Israel's codes 
of laws, including the ten commandments, are be- 
lieved to have come directly from God, prescribed 
and ordained by Him for Israel's government. 

On the other hand, they who can place no faith in 
the supernatural origin of the Christian religion be- 
lieve that the Old Testament is simply a compilation 
of the early literature of the Hebrew race, and that 
the narrative portions of the Pentateuch are com- 
posed largely of traditions and legends, the same as 
is the case with the sacred books and early literature 
of all the other oriental nations. The claim of the 
Israelites that they were God's chosen people had 
its origin in their erroneous conception of Jehovah, 
whom they regarded as God of Israel only. They 
attributed the authorship of their laws to Jehovah 
because, as it appears, this was the custom in that 



8 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

early age, neighboring nations likewise ascribing 
the authorship of their laws to their own particular 
God. 

We sometimes hear it asserted that a true con- 
ception of God could not have been acquired by the 
Jews without the aid of divine revelation. It is a 
fact, however, that for many centuries the Jewish 
conception of Jehovah w^as, to say the least, very 
crude. He was originally regarded by them not as 
the Universal Father of mankind, but as a mere 
tribal god. Jehovah, or "Yahveh" as they originally 
called him, was the god of the Jews only. They did 
not differ in this respect from neighboring peoples 
who likewise had their own gods, as the Ammon- 
ites whose god was Milcom, the Moabites whose 
god was Chemosh, or the Philistines whose god was 
Dagon. Yahveh, the same as all other tribal gods, 
was believed by his people to take delight in the 
sweet savours arising from animals burnt on the* 
altar of sacrifice. Yahveh, in common with all 
tribal gods, was believed to be friendly to his own 
people only, and constantly to aid them in overcom- 
ing and destroying their enemies. In time as the 
Jews became more enlightened they began to re- 
gard Jehovah as a righteous god and clothed him 
with moral attributes. 

For many centuries the Jews held very vague 
ideas as to the future life. They believed that at 
death their spirits went to sheol, a place by them re- 
garded as a vast subterranean tomb. No thought of 
retribution was connected with this deep and 
gloomy underworld. It was a common receptacle 
for all, both the good and the wicked. The dis- 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 9 

tinctions there made were believed to be national, 
not moral. In truth the Israelites were so com- 
pletely wrapped up in the welfare, both present and 
future, of their people as a whole that they gave 
little or no thought to the ultimate fate of the indi- 
vidual. It was with the nation that Jehovah had 
established his covenant. The nation was regarded 
as the unit. The religious life of the individual was 
entirely subordinate to that of the nation. The in- 
dividual was quite content to have poured his little 
stream of life and service into the tide of national 
life. But when the nation came to an end with the 
captivity, the time their whole people were carried 
off into a foreign land, the individual at once arose 
in importance. The nation had fallen, but the indi- 
vidual remained. It was from the Persians during 
the Exile and not thru divine revelation, that they 
acquired a fixed belief in the immortality of the 
soul. 

The prophet Ezekiel, who wrote during the Exile, 
was the first to introduce the doctrine of individual 
retribution. He confines the retribution, however, 
to the present life, claiming that misfortune and 
suffering here in this life are certain to befall the 
wicked, while earthly happiness and prosperity will 
be the reward of those who here lead worthy lives. 

After the Restoration, severely schooled and 
chastened as they had been by long years of adver- 
sity, the Israelites became intensely religious. All 
foreign wives were put away for fear the worship of 
false gods might again be introduced. All religious 
rites ordained by Jehovah were strictly observed 
and all of his commandments were faithfully kept. 
They fully believed that Jehovah would now fulfil 



10 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

his part of the covenant, would help them to over- 
come their enemies and cause them to become a 
great and prosperous people. But they were bit- 
terly disappointed, for the time soon came when 
they were again compelled to submit to a foreign 
yoke and they became grievously oppressed. The 
belief now gradually spread among them that their 
present misfortunes and calamities had befallen 
them, not because Jehovah had forsaken them or 
was displeased with them, but because he was test- 
ing and disciplining them. 

Having acquired the belief in immortality, also 
believing that their present misfortunes were owing 
to Jehovah's intent to discipline them, and realizing 
that retribution does not always occur in the pres- 
ent life, as had been preached by Ezekiel, but that 
the wicked sometimes prosper in this life while the 
good are at times overtaken with misfortune, they 
reasonably concluded that the present life is a life 
of trial or probation and that full retribution does 
not take place until in the future life. Sheol, which 
for many centuries had been regarded as a place 
where no moral distinction was made, now appears 
as divided into separate receptacles for the good and 
the bad. One part of Sheol became known as ge- 
henna, a lake of fire and brimstone, and the other 
was called paradise or heaven. The present world 
was regarded as evil, and as being by permission of 
Jehovah under the domination of Satan. The Chris- 
tian era was ushered in with the proclamation that 
this evil world would now end and that the kingdom 
of heaven was at hand. We thus find that the be- 
lief that the present life is a life of probation and 
that retribution will follow in the future life, did not 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 11 

come to Israel thru revelation but that it was 
strictly human in its origin and that it was a nat- 
ural growth or development out of former existing 
beliefs. Likewise every advance made by them in 
their conception of the Deity was brought about 
from natural causes and not thru revelation. The 
exalted conception of Jehovah as the Universal 
Father of all mankind was now and then reached by 
an earnest seeker after the truth, but at no time did 
this become the prevailing belief among the Jews. 
It is a fact that throughout their entire history down 
to and including the time of Jesus of Nazareth, Je- 
hovah was regarded by the great body of Jews as a 
mere national god, as god of the Jews only. How 
can it be possible that a true conception of God was 
divinely revealed to the Jews when at no time in 
their history did they as people have aught but a 
very imperfect conception of God ? 

It may well be asked, why should divine revela- 
tion have been made to the Hebrews alone? The 
Hebrews held an inferior position among the nations 
of the earth at almost every stage of their history. 
Several of their neighbors had a larger population 
and were fully as civilized. At least one other 
nation, the Parseans, were as earnest seekers after 
the true God and had as exalted a conception of 
God as did the Jews. Why should divine revelation 
have been made only to the Jews? Are we to sup- 
pose that the salvation of all the other nations, both 
great and small, was a matter of indifference to 
the Almighty? That God revealed himself to a few 
involves an act of injustice toward the many. At a 
later period Christ was sent into the world, we are 
taught, for the purpose to reveal the true God and to 



12 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

offer himself as an atoning sacrifice for his people. 
Here again the revelation was made to, and knowl- 
edge of the atonement reached, a comparatively few 
inhabitants of the earth. Many millions of God's 
people in every age had no opportunity to know and 
to believe in Christ. Are they all lost? The Chris- 
tian peoples constitute today not over one-third the 
population of the earth. The Buddhists alone out- 
number the Christians by fully fifty millions. The 
Buddhist is just as honest and sincere in his belief, 
and is just as sincere in believing that his religion 
was supernaturally revealed, as is the Christian. 
Is his soul lost because the Faith he believes in hap- 
pens to be some other than the Christian Faith, 
which very few of them had the opportunity of 
knowing? We say again, a revelation made to a few 
would have been manifestly unjust toward the 
many, and we cannot believe it because we know 
that the great God is just and impartial toward all. 

The Old Testament writings cannot be of divinely 
revealed or inspired origin because they ascribe a 
very low moral character to our God. 

The Pentateuch, more particularly, clothes Him 
with merely human attributes and passions and rep- 
resents Him as being directly responsible for many 
cruel and inhuman acts. He is represented as chang- 
ing His mind and repenting for what He has done. 
He is represented as giving vent to feelings of hatred 
and of revenge. He is represented as causing men 
to practice deception and to despoil others of their 
property under false pretense. He is represented as 
ordering the slaying in cold blood of hundreds of 
women and innocent children. Let us examine some 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 13 

of these Old Testament representations of the Deity 
more in detail. In one of the first chapters of Gen- 
esis we read that Cain made an offering of the fruits 
of the field and Abel made an offering of the first- 
lings of his flock slain upon the altar of sacrifice. 
Cain's innocent offering was rejected and Abel's 
bloody sacrifice was accepted, and thus Jehovah from 
the very beginning is represented as preferring blood 
and the slaughter of victims of which we find so 
much throughout the Old Testament. 

Jehovah hated Esau and loved Jacob (Malachi 
1 :2, 3) who deceived his father Isaac. In the whole 
of the unseemly transactions between Jacob and 
Laban, Jehovah sides with Jacob and actively co- 
operates with him in cheating his father-in-law. 

Pharaoh persisted in forbidding the Israelites 
from leaving Egypt because God, we are told, had 
hardened Pharaoh's heart. At the visitation of 
every plague Pharaoh relented and would have in- 
terposed no further objection to their withdrawal 
had not God in every instance again hardened his 
heart. Thus is ascribed an act of duplicity to our 
God which is unbelievable. The last plague visited 
upon the Egyptians was the slaying of the first-born 
of every single family throughout all Egypt. Many 
hundreds of innocent children and many hundreds of 
fathers and mothers, who happened to be the first- 
born of their parents' families, for no fault of their 
own, were thus suddenly slain in cold blood. **And 
there was a great cry in Egypt," we read in Exodus 
12:30, "for there was not a house where there was 
not one dead." It cannot be possible that we have 
formed so low an estimate of our God as to believe 
that He inflicted this, one of the most cruel, inhuman 



14 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

and monstrous punishments ever recorded in the 
history of man. 

In the 11th and 12th chapters of Exodus we read 
that the Lord said unto Moses, "Speak now in the 
ears of the people and let them ask every man of his 
neighbor, and every woman of her neighbor, jewels 
of silver and jewels of gold * * * and the chil- 
dren of Israel did according to the word of Moses ; 
and they asked of the Egyptians jewels of silver and 
jewels of gold and raiment, and Jehovah gave the 
people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that 
they let them have what they asked. And they de- 
spoiled the Egyptians." To impose on the generos- 
ity of a gratuitous lender with the view of despoiling 
him is the most despicable kind of larceny and yet 
we are told that Jehovah by miraculous interposi- 
tion gave the Israelites favor in the sight of the 
Egyptians so that they could thus defraud the Eg}^p- 
tians to the largest extent possible. That our God 
would stoop to anything so low and mean it is 
impossible for us to believe. In I Kings 22:23, we 
are told that the Lord "put a lying spirit" in the 
mouth of the prophets so that they deceived King 
Ahab and beguiled him to his destruction. Even St. 
Paul so mistakes the character of God that in 2 Thes- 
salonians 2:11, he says, "And for this cause God 
shall send them strong delusion^ that they should be- 
lieve a lie." Any Scripture that states that God has 
practiced deceit, does not state the truth and there- 
fore cannot have been inspired. 

The Old Testament ascribes a low moral char- 
acter to God also in the numerous acts of extreme 



*"God sendeth them a working of error," as given in the Revised 
Version. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 15 

cruelty He is alleged to have committed. His al- 
leged destruction of the first-born of every family 
throughout all Egypt has already been referred to. 
In their conquest of the land of Canaan the Israelites 
took many cities, over a hundred we are told, and in 
nearly every instance they butchered all of the in- 
habitants, not only the men, but the; women and 
children. The Canaanites had been in possession of 
the land for many generations. It rightfully be- 
longed to them. They worshipped their own tribal 
gods the same as did Israel. In some respects they 
were more civilized than was Israel. But we are 
told that they were a very wicked people, yet ac- 
cording to Israel's own story they do not appear 
to have been more wicked than were the Israelites. 
History does not record a more unjust, cruel and 
barbarous invasion and conquest than that of the 
land of Canaan by Israel. Although they butchered 
the men, women and children of many of the cities 
that were taken, yet the Israelites were punished by 
Jehovah, we are told, because they did not make 
clean work of it and exterminate them altogether. 
Because of Israel's slow work in the slaughter of 
the natives, Jehovah concluded, it appears, to take a 
hand in it himself. At one time "He cast down great 
stones from heaven" (Joshua 10:11) upon Israel's 
enemies and the stones, it is stated, killed more peo- 
ple than were slain by Israel's swords. At another 
time, the sun stood still in the midst of heaven and 
hasted not to go down about a whole day, so that 
the Israelites could keep up the slaughter and avenge 
themselves upon their enemies. 



16 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

Of the many cities taken and destroyed by Israel 
a notable instance is that of Jericho, whose walls 
tumbled down as if by magic and by Jehovah's be- 
hest, it is stated, all of the inhabitants, every man, 
woman and child, were slain by the sword, and no 
one was spared save one woman who was a harlot, 
Rahab by name. Her despicable treachery in be- 
traying her own people was deemed so worthy an 
act that she and her family alone, of all the inhab- 
itants of the city, were spared their lives. There is 
nothing in the Old Testament so instinct with fanatic 
tribalism as is this account of the destruction of 
Jericho and the sparing of the harlot Rahab. 

The many acts of barbarous cruelty ascribed to 
Jehovah in the Old Testament we now know could 
never have occurred. That the Israelites sincerely 
believed them to be true there is no doubt, and 
why? Because of their mistaken conception of 
Jehovah in regarding Him as God of their own peo- 
ple only. It was then a common belief, not only with 
Israel but with all their neighbors, that every tribal 
god actively assisted his people in overcoming their 
enemies. That the nature of such assistance from 
their god was on a level with the morals of that 
particular age, we may naturally expect. 

Such miraculous stories as casting down stones 
from heaven, causing the walls of a city to tumble 
down, and making the sun to stand still for a whole 
day, all of them undoubtedly had their origin in 
traditions handed down through successive genera- 
tions in an age when writing was difficult and little 
understood and when very few writings were pre- 
served. Tradition, even among an enlightened peo- 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 17 

pie, we know to be very unreliable^. In a supersti- 
tious age it is much worse. A plain unembellished 
narrative of historic incidents, in time by much oral 
repetition, will likely become a truly wonderful tale, 
particularly among an intensely patriotic people. 
When narratives are handed down from father to 
son for so long as were Israel's, the time comes when 
they are actually beUeved, however wonderful. 
When they were finally reduced to writing in the 
shape as we now have them in the Old Testament, 
we have not the least doubt that the Old Testament 
authors were perfectly sincere in believing that they 
had actually occurred just as they are recorded. 

The accounts as given in the Old Testament of 
the Creation and of the Deluge could not have been 
divinely revealed, for they are now known to be 
inaccurate. 

According to the Old Testament chronology the 
earth was created a little more than 6,000 years ago^. 
Geology has disclosed by testimony unmistakable in 
its character that the earth is of immense antiquity, 
covering at least a million of years, and that man 
first appeared at a comparatively late period in the 
earth's existence, but at the lowest calculation not 
less than 30,000 years ago. The evidence furnished 
by the stratified rocks as to the great age of the 
earth and the first appearance thereon of man, is 
fully corroborated by the sciences of astronomy, an- 



Its tendency is patriotic and poetical. Its tendency is to mag:nify 



and to exaggerate," someone has said 



^According to the Hebrew Bible man was created 4157 Before Christ; 
according to the Samaritan Bible, 4243 B. C; according to the Septuagint, 
5328 B. C. 



18 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

thropology, archaeology, paleontology and compara- 
tive philology. The Creation story as given in the 
Old Testament is not sustained by any of the modern 
sciences. Everyone of them that at all bears on the 
subject, plainly refutes it. 

The age of the world as recorded in the Bible is 
refuted not only by the sciences, but also by histor- 
ical records. Extensive excavations have of recent 
years been made amidst the ruins of ancient cities in 
Babylonia and Assyria. In magnificent temples that 
have been unearthed were found large libraries con- 
sisting of cuneiform writings inscribed or impressed 
on tablets of stone, bronze, iron and clay. These 
ancient records have indisputably established the 
fact that there was an advanced and flourishing civil- 
ization in these countries and that they contained 
large and populous cities, long before the date which 
the Old Testament ascribes to the creation of man 
and of the world.^ 

According to the Biblical account heaven and 
earth were created in six days. We now know that 
the earth acquired its adornment of vegetable and 
animal life not in six days, but by a gradual process 
extending over many centuries and embracing un- 
numbered generations of living forms. Many up- 
holders of the faith in divine revelation maintain 
that the six days were intended to mean six aeons or 
long indefinite periods of time. The Scripture text, 
however, is very specific on this point. After each 
day's work the text expressly states, "and the eve- 



*According to the Biblical account, the different races of men on earth 
have all sprung from one single family, the family of Noah, and yet we 
find Negroes as clearly developed in type as they are today, outlined on 
monuments in Eg>'pt, reaching back long prior to the time of Noah. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 19 

ning and the morning were the first day,"' "and the 
evening and the morning were the second day," and 
so on to the sixth. And when the six days' work 
of creation was completed the text states, "and He 
rested on the seventh day from all his work which 
He had made, and God blessed the seventh day and 
hallowed it, because that in it He rested from all 
his work which God had created and made'* (Genesis 
2:23). At another place we read : **For in six days 
Jehovah made heaven and earth, the sea and all 
that in them is and rested the seventh day" (Exodus 
20:11). To make each day mean an aeon or an in- 
definite period of time, when the langauge used is 
so plain and unmistakable, is certainly placing a 
very constrained construction on the text. If the 
account is the revealed word of God no language 
would have been used that is misleading. 

Many of the erroneous impressions and views 
about the universe that prevailed before the time 
of Copernicus and Galileo, plainly appear in the 
biblical account of the Creation. The earth was then 
believed to have a fiat surface surrounded by the 
ocean and was regarded as the centre of the uni- 
verse. The Hebrews had no conception of an infinite 
ethereal space. Heaven was the firmament which 
Jehovah created on the second day (Genesis 1 :7, 8) 
for the purpose of dividing the waters above from 
the waters beneath. The firmament was believed 
to be a solid arched or vaulted dome resting upon 
the pillars of the earth (Job 26:11). On the top of 
this dome were the reservoirs of "the waters above 
the heaven" which supplied the rain and the dew. 
In the dome were windows which were opened when 



20 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

the rain fell (Genesis 7:11). The sun and the stars 
were believed to be mere luminaries fastened to and 
suspended from the firmament for the purpose of 
giving the earth light. It is very evident that these 
were the views of the writer of the Creation epic. 
He tells us that it took four days to create the earth 
and what it contains, while it took only one day to 
create the unnumbered millions of heavenly bodies. 
The earth we know to be part of a planetary system, 
and yet we are told in the Creation account that 
the earth was created prior to the whole system 
from which it sprung. All vegetation depends for 
its growth on the actinic principle in the sun's rays, 
and yet all vegetation appeared on the third day, 
while the sunlight was not seen till the fourth day. 
There are two distinct narratives of the Creation, 
the one contained in the first chapter and the other 
contained in the second chapter of the Book of 
Genesis^. These two narratives do not agree, but 
are at variance with one another. In the first place, 
the order of creation is different. In the first chapter 
the order given is vegetation, animals, man (male 
and female) ; in the second chapter the order is man, 
trees, animals, woman. In the first chapter man is 
made last of all. In the second chapter man is made 
first of all, before vegetation and before the animals. 
In the first chapter man and woman are created to- 
gether. In the second chapter man at first is all 
alone. In the first chapter man is given dominion 
over all the earth and every living thing that moveth 
upon the earth, receiving the whole great earth as 



*The first narrative ends more properly at Gen. 2:3. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 21 

his portion, while in the second chapter he is con- 
fined in a very limited sphere, in a garden. 

If the biblical account of the Creation came to the 
Hebrews through divine revelation, it would neces- 
sarily have been original with the Hebrews. We 
have every reason to believe, however, that such was 
not the case. While excavations were being made 
some years ago amid the ruins of a magnificent 
palace in Babylon, there was discovered in the 
library of the palace the Babylonian Creation-Epic, 
inscribed on seven tablets of stone. This creation 
epic begins by stating that in the Beginning, before 
heaven and earth were made, there was only the 
primaeval ocean, which is personified as a male and 
female being, Apsu and Tiamat. A contest arose 
among the gods and as a result Marmaduk, the God 
of Light, smote Tiamat into two parts. Out of one 
part he produced the firmament of heaven and out 
of the other part he fashioned the earth. He then 
proceeds to form, in their order, the plants, the ani- 
mals and finally man, who is made out of clay. The 
Babylonian and the Hebrew creation epics are in 
many respects strikingly similar, and there is but 
little doubt that the Hebrew originated from the 
Babylonian, which is much the older. It is true, the 
Hebrew creation epic is much superior to the Baby- 
lonian, as it is pervaded and dominated by far purer 
and nobler spiritual ideas. It was written at a 
much later period, when there had been much ad- 
vance in spiritual thought. In fact, the grand epic 
as given in the first chapter of Genesis must have 
been written at a comparatively late period when 
Jehovah was already regarded, by the more ad- 



22 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

vanced thinkers among the Hebrews, not so much as 
the tribal god of the Hebrews as the one Supreme 
God over all. 

Nor could the account of the Deluge have been 
of inspired origin. In Gen. 6:6, 7, we read, "And it 
repented Jehovah that he had made man on the 
earth and it grieved him at his heart. And Jehovah 
said I will destroy man whom I have created from 
the face of the ground; both man and beast, and 
creeping things, and birds of the heavens; for it 
repenteth me that I have made them." God is here 
clothed with purely human attributes, repentance 
and grief. The Almighty being all-wise and un- 
changeable, it is inconceivable that He should repent 
and grieve at what He had done. 

Furthermore, why should God fill this world with 
his own children, knowing that in a comparatively 
short time He would have to destroy them. As 
someone has stated, "He tells us how to raise our 
children, and yet He could not raise His and had 
to destroy them." It is a very unlikely story. 

It has been claimed that the Deluge was not a 
universal but a local deluge. The Old Testament, 
however, is very explicit on this point : 

"And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the 
earth, and all the high mountains that were under 
the whole heaven were covered." Gen. 7 :19. 

"And every living thing was destroyed that was 
upon the face of the ground, both man and cattle 
and creeping things and birds of the heaven, and 
they were destroyed from the earth, and Noah only 
was left, and they that were with him in the ark." 
Gen. 7:23. 



The old testament 23 

That there was a universal deluge as described is 
not only improbable but impossible. There is not 
enough water on the earth that could have flooded 
the whole earth as described, covering the highest 
mountain peaks. In that early day when the diffi- 
culties and dangers of travel were very great, how- 
was it possible for Xoah and his three sons to make 
long journeys into every part of the world to gather 
and bring home all the animals of every kind, the 
fowl of the air and the myriads of insects included 
in the "creeping things/' both of tropical and frigid 
zones? The ark could not possibly have held them 
all, and food sufficient for their sustenance until re- 
vived vegetation should make fresh food again pro- 
curable. If only a few pair of each kind of animal 
were taken into the ark, and all the rest destroyed, 
what did all the carnivorous beasts that were in the 
ark feed on during and after the flood? During the 
long time it took for the waters to abate, and while 
the ark w^as resting on one of the highest mountain 
peaks, where there is perpetual snow and ice, how- 
could Noah and family and all the tropical animals 
possibly have endured and survived the intense cold? 

In the Book of Genesis there are two different and 
contradictory accounts of the Deluge, just as there 
are two varying accounts of the Creation. Of the 
two accounts of the Creation, one follows the other; 
but of the two accounts of the Deluge, one is spliced 
into the other. The reason why we happen to 
have two different accounts of the Creation and of 
the Flood, we will take up later on. 

The two accounts of the Deluge contradict one 
another in two particulars : 



24 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

First. According to Gen. 7:12, and Gen. 8:6-12, 
the Flood lasted 54 days (40+7+7). According to 
Gen. 7:24 and Gen. 8:3, the Flood lasted 150 days. 

Second. According to Gen. 6 :19, 20, Noah was di- 
rected to take with him into the ark one pair of all 
animals, whether clean or unclean. According to 
Gen. 7 :2, 3, Noah was directed to take with him into 
the ark seven pair of all clean and two pair of all 
unclean animals. If the writer of the Pentateuch 
was divinely inspired, how can these contradictions 
be accounted for? 

The Bible story of the Flood is undoubtedly no 
more than a highly colored tradition of a local flood 
destroying many lives at an early day, the same as 
we find in the history of many other countries. 
Babylon, with its two great rivers, the Tigris and 
the Euphrates, was in a peculiar sense the land of 
floods and it likewise had its deluge epic, older than 
the Hebrew and very similar. A copy of it, in- 
scribed on a stone tablet, has in recent years been 
discovered in excavations made among the ruins of 
that country. It sets forth that Bel, the storm god, 
determined to send a flood as a judgment on the sins 
of the people. The goddes Ea revealed to Sipnasti 
(Noah) in a dream how he might construct a ship, 
six stories high. For six days rain fell in torrents. 
Ark in sight of Mt. Nisir. Sipnasti sends forth a 
dove, then a swallow, and lastly, a raven, which re- 
turned not. Ea besought Bel nevermore to send a 
flood upon the earth. Bel suflfered himself to be per- 
suaded. 

Another reason why we cannot believe in divine 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 25 

revelation is because of the bloody sacrifices. These 
could not have been instituted by God and exacted 
by Him of the Hebrews, as is set forth and claimed 
in the Old Testament. 

We are told that shortly after the Flood "Noah 
built an altar unto Jehovah and took of every clean 
beast and of every clean bird and oftered burnt-offer- 
ings on the altar. And Jehovah smelt the sweet 
savor; and Jehovah said in his heart, I will not 
again curse the ground any m.ore for man's sake, 
for that the imagination of man's heart is evil from 
his youth ; neither will I again smite anymore every- 
thing living as I have done." Gen. 8:21, 22. 

In the early Hebrew religion all worship took the 
form of sacrifice, offerings either of animals or of 
the fruits of the field. Not only did animal sacrifice 
receive the divine sanction, we are told, but this 
mode of worship was expressly exacted of Israel by 
Jehovah. Thus in Exodus 20:24, we read that God 
said to Moses, ''An altar of earth thou shalt make 
unto me and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt-oflrer- 
ings and thy peace-offerings, thine sheep and thine 
oxen." In Exodus 29:25 God directs that the ani- 
mals be burnt on the altar "for a sweet savor before 
Jehovah".^ It is stated that at times God even gave 
minute directions as to what was to be done with the 
animal offered for sacrifice. Thus in Exodus 29:11-14, 
we read that God directed, "And thou shalt kill the 
bullock before Jehovah at the door of the tent of 
meeting. And thou shalt take of the blood of the 
bullock and put it upon the horns of the altar with 



*Why are not animal sacrifices exacted of us now? They ought to be 
as sweet a savor to Jehovah now as at any time. 



26 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

thy finger, and thou shalt pour out all the blood at 
the base of the altar. And thou shalt take all the fat 
that covereth the inwards, and the caul upon the 
liver and the two kidneys, and the fat that is upon 
them, and burn them upon the altar, but the flesh 
of the bullock and its skin, and its dung, shalt thou 
burn with fire without the camp ; it is a sin-offering." 

Upon every day of each year Israel was required 
by Jehovah to offer a bullock as a sin-offering and 
also two lambs as burnt-offerings, one in the morn- 
ing and the other in the evening. (Exodus 29:36-38.) 
The first-born of all animals Jehovah required to be 
slaughtered. He required numerous other animal 
sacrifices, such as, at the birth of every child, at the 
circumcision of every male, at every marriage, in ful- 
fillment of every vow, at the making of every con- 
tract, at the purification of woman after childbirth, 
when making an oath or a vow, at the commission 
of every sin through ignorance, at the coming of a 
traveler, every time when lieing to or deceiving one's 
neighbor, etc. Then there were special burnt-offer- 
ings required by Jehovah on each Sabbath, at every 
new-moon, and elaborate sacrifices on their many 
festival days. 

Can we believe that Jehovah required of the Israel- 
ites all of these numerous, bloody, sacrifical rites? 
That He even prescribed all the Httle details of this 
barbarous and revolting kind of worship, as is stated 
in the Pentateuch, is beyond all intelligent belief. 

Sacrifices did not originate with the Hebrews. 
They were in fact the backbone of all, or nearly all, 
the early religious beliefs. Eating and drinking to- 
gether, Ave know, promote fellowship and bring those 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 27 

participating into closer communion. The offering 
of meat and cereals and of wine upon the altar was 
believed to bring into closer communion the wor- 
shipper with his God. Anything offered on the altar 
was considered as being literally food for the gods. 
The meats offered were burnt so that the gods might 
enjoy the sweet savors arising therefrom. The re- 
ligions of the Babylonians, of the Canaanites and of 
other neighbors of the Israelites likewise enjoined 
sacrifices. Jehovah did not institute or sanction sec- 
rifice. They constituted the Hebrew form of wor- 
ship because they constituted the common form of 
worship of primitive times. 

As they became more enlightened and civilized, 
sacrifices began to grow into disfavor with the more 
intelligent class of Hebrews. Even as early as King 
David's time we read that Samuel said: "Hath 
Jehovah as great delight in burnt-offerings and sac- 
rifices, as in obeying the voice of Jehovah. Behold 
to obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken than 
the fat of rams." 1 Samuel 15 :22. 

It appears very evident that Samuel did not be- 
lieve that sacrifices were commanded and required 
by God, or he would not have said "To obey is bet- 
ter than sacrifice." King David also writes, "Sacri- 
fice and offering Thou (God) hast no delight in." 
Psalms 40:6. 

At later periods in Israel's history, sacrifices were 
looked upon in a still less favorable light, as appears 
from the following Old Testament quotations : 

"What unto me is the multitude of your sacrifices? 
saith Jehovah. I have had enough of the burnt- 
offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts, and I de- 



28 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

light not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs or of 
he-goats . . . yea, when ye make many prayers, 
I will not hear, your hands are full of blood." Isaiah 
1:11-15. 

"For I desire goodness and not sacrifice ; and the 
knowledge of God more than burnt-offerings." 
Hosea 6 :6. 

"Will Jehovah be pleased with thousand of rams 
or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give 
my first-born for my transgressions, the fruit of my 
body for the sin of my soul ? He hath showed thee, 
O man, what is good; and what doth Jehovah re- 
quire of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, 
and to walk humbly with thy God." Micah 6 :7, 8. 

Isaiah, Hosea and Micah surely would not have 
regarded animal sacrifices with so much disfavor had 
they believed, as did the writer or compiler of the 
Book of Exodus, that sacrifices were instituted and 
exacted of the Jews by Jehovah. 

The Mosaic laws of the Pentateuch prescribed for 
the government of the Hebrews, were they of divine 
origin ? 

Whenever any set of laws are given to the Israel- 
ites for their government, the Pentateuch always 
states that Moses received the laws direct from Je- 
hovah, as for example : 

"This is what Jehovah has commanded." Leviti- 
cus 17-2. 

"These are the ordinances (Jehovah speaking to 
Moses) which thou shalt set before them." Exodus 
21:1. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 29 

"These are the statutes and ordinances (Jehovah 
again speaking to Moses) which ye shall observe." 
Deut. 12:1. 

It has been discovered that many of these laws, 
which are represented as having come direct from 
Jehovah, are strikingly similar to the laws contained 
in another code of laws known as the Hammurabi 
Code^, which was in existence long before the time 
of Moses. 

Hammurabi, who lived about 2250 B. C. and 800 
years before the time of Moses, was one of the 
earliest and most powerful kings of Babylonia. After 
he had driven out of the country the Elamites, the 
hereditary foes of Babylonia, and had amalgamated 
all parts of his kingdom into one united whole, with 
the city of Babylon as the political and religious 
center, he carefully prepared a code of laws for the 
government of his country. 

The Hammurabi code of laws was discovered by 
the French archaeologist, de Morgan, and by V. 
Schler in excavations b}^ them made in Susa in the 
year 1902. They found them engraved on a monu- 
mental block of diorite nearly 8 feet high containing 
282 paragraphs of laws. This polished shaft bears on 
its top the Ukeness of King Hammurabi in the act of 
receiving these laws from the sun god, Shamash, the 
supreme judge of heaven and earth. While the 
Hammurabi code deals exclusively with civil enact- 
ments and while, on the other hand, the Hebrew 
code is distinctively religious in its purpose, yet in 
many of the laws contained in both codes there is so 



*See "Babel and Bible," by Frederick Delitrsch, "Comparative Re- 
ligion," by Louie Henry Jordan, al»o "Th« Biblical World," Vol. 86:249. 



30 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

marked a similarity not only in the substance mat- 
ter but even in phraseology, that the inference seems 
plain and convincing that Moses must have made 
free use of the Hammurabi code while preparing 
and framing his code of laws for the government of 
the Israelites. 

That Moses had knowledge of the Hammurabi 
code may be inferred from the fact that the code was 
in force in countries within which, or contiguous 
to which, Moses lived for longer or shorter periods 
We do not for a moment believe that Moses prac- 
ticed an imposition on the Israelites at the time he 
provided a code of laws for their government. In 
order to procure for his people the best laws possi- 
ble, he very properly and naturally would consult 
and copy from the laws of older people. Do not we 
do the same ? Whenever a new state constitution is 
framed by any one state of our United States, its 
framers are wont to consult and to copy from the 
constitutions of other states and of other countries 
and thus profit by the experience of others. 

When Moses dedicated his laws to the Hebrew 
God and made it appear that they had been received 
from Jehovah, he simply followed the custom of his 
time. Every tribal god was believed to be the guid- 
ing and controlling spirit of his people in all things, 
winning battles for them in times of war and fram- 
ing laws for their government in times of peace. 
This was already the belief at the time of adoption 
of the Hammurabi code, which is represented as hav- 
ing been received by Hammurabi from the Babylon- 
ian God Shamash. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 31 

However, not all of the laws contained in the 
Pentateuch are of Mosaic origin. From time to time 
changes and modifications crept into their laws, the 
same as occurs in all countries. As the Hebrew 
nation grew older the exigencies of the times had to 
be met by the modification of the old or the intro- 
duction of new laws. 

The Pentateuch contains a number of passages 
which plainly indicate that it was written or com- 
piled subsequent to the time of Moses, its reputed 
author. 

In Genesis 36:31 occurs this passage: "Before 
there reigned any king over the children of Israel." 
The use of this expression implies acquaintance 
with the fact that Israel became a monarchy. It 
very evidently must have been written subsequent 
to the time that the Israelites did have a king rule 
over them. Their first king was Saul. This passage, 
therefore, in place of having been written by Moses, 
must have been written during or after King Saul's 
time. 

A number of years after the Israelites had taken 
possession of the land of Canaan, they changed the 
name of the city Laish to the name of Dan, as is 
stated in Judges 18 :29. So there was no city by the 
name of Dan in the land of Canaan in the time of 
Moses, its name then was Laish, and yet we read in 
Genesis 14:14 that Abraham and his servants pur- 
sued a certain party "as far as Dan,'' plainly imply- 
ing that it was written subsequent to the time that 
the name of the city was changed from Laish to Dan. 

In Genesis 12 :6 and again in Genesis 13 :7 we find 



32 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

this clause used, "And the Canaanite was then in the 
land." This also must have been written subse- 
quent to the time of Moses, as the Canaanites had 
undisputed possession of the land so long as Moses 
lived. If Moses was its author, he evidently would 
have written "The land now occupied by the Canaan- 
ites." 

In Genesis 20 :7 Abraham is called a "nabi," mean- 
ing prophet, in the original text. In 1 Samuel 9:9 
we are told that he that is now called a "nabi" was 
beforetime called a "roeh." The word "nabi," there- 
fore, was not likely used until during, or subse- 
quent to, the time of Samuel. 

In Deuteronomy 1:1 we read: "These are the 
words which Moses spake unto all Israel beyond the 
Jordan in the wilderness." Beyond the Jordan is on 
the east of Jordan. The quoted passage implies an 
author on the west side of Jordan, but Moses never 
crossed the Jordan, as he never entered the prom- 
ised land (Deut. 34:4), so he could not have written 
it and it must have been written by someone after 
Israel had entered Canaan. 

In Deuteronomy 34:10, it is stated, "And there 
hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto 
Moses, whom Jehovah knew face to face." This evi- 
dently must also have been written long after the 
time of Moses. 

The Book of Jasher contains poems whose author- 
ship it attributes to David, also contains poems 
whose authorship it attributes to Solomon. The 
book evidently, therefore, could not have been written 
before the time of King Solomon. Yet the Book of 
Jasher is quoted in Joshua 10:13, thus plainly indi- 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 33 

eating that the Book of Joshua, in place of having 
been written by Joshua, must have been written 
a long time afterward or after the time of King 
Solomon. 

The Pentateuch, in place of having come to us 
thru divine revelation, bears strong evidence in 
its composition of being a compilation of earlier 
Hebrew records. 

The Book of Genesis, more particularly, plainly 
indicates that its contents are made up of at least 
two distinct records, as almost every event given 
therein is doubly recorded. Thus do we find two 
distinct accounts of the Creation and two of the 
Deluge. Of the many other repetitions are the fol- 
lowing: The promise of a son for Sarah, first in 
Genesis 17:16-19, and again in Genesis 18:9-15; the 
naming of Bethel by Jacob, first in Genesis 28:19 
and again in Genesis 35:15; Jacob's name being 
changed to Israel, first in Genesis 22 :28 and again in 
Genesis 35 :10. Not only do we find repetitions, we 
also find discrepancies. The variances in the ac- 
counts of the Creation and of the Deluge have 
already been referred to. In Gen. 35 :19 we are told 
of the death of Rachel and yet subsequently, or in 
Gen. 37:10, mention is made of her being alive. 
According to Gen. 35 :18, 19, Benjamin was born at 
or near Bethlehem, according to Gen. 35 :26 he was 
born at Paddan-aram. We find varying explana- 
tions of the name Bethel in Gen. 28:18, 19 and 
Gen. 35 :14, 15, of the name Beer-sheba in Gen. 21 :31 
and Gen. 26:33, and of the name Israel in Gen. 32:28 
and Gen. 35 :10. 



34 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

On the theory that the whole Book of Genesis 
was written by a single author, these repetitions and 
discrepancies are very hard to explain; but on the 
theory that in the Book of Genesis there are woven 
together different documents containing similar, but 
in some respects varying, accounts of the same nar- 
ratives, then these repetitions and discrepancies can 
very readily be accounted for. 

Another proof that the Book of Genesis is a com- 
pilation is furnished by the different names given to 
Deity in the original Hebrew text of Genesis. In 
some of the sentences or paragraphs of the original 
text He is named Jahveh and in others He is named 
Elohim. If those sentences in which He is named 
Jahveh are separated from the text and are strung 
together, they will make a fairly well connected ac- 
count of nearly all the events narrated in Genesis, 
and the same is true of the sentences which desig- 
nate the Deity by the name of Elohim, In these 
two parallel accounts running thru the Book of 
Genesis, the fact that the Deity is designated by the 
name of Elohim in the one and by the name of 
Jahveh in the other, strikingly suggests that orig- 
inally they must have been separate documents and 
that Genesis is a compilation of both. 

So sacred had these separate documents ap- 
parently become that even where they were at 
variance with one another, the compilers made little 
attempt to reconcile the differences but gave both 
virtually in their entirety. Thus, for example, is 
there a variance as to the duration of the Flood and 
another variance as to the number of animals which 
were taken by Noah into the ark, both of which 
have alreadv been referred to. 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 35 

Further proof that the Pentateuch is a compila- 
tion is the fact that the laws contained in it do not 
constitute a single uniform code of laws, but are 
made up of at least three different codes, which vary 
from one another and which plainly indicate succes- 
sive stages of development. The first code undoubt- 
edly was of Mosaic origin. A number of the laws 
in the Pentateuch are repeatedly unobserved or 
transgressed by pious men, who stand unrebuked, 
which makes it very evident that such laws could 
not yet have been in existence at the time of their 
unobservance. For example, the Deuteronomic law 
requires all sacrifices to be made at one central 
place, the place of the tabernacle or sanctuary, and 
expressly forbids the erection of altars for sacrifice 
anywhere else; yet Joshua, Samuel, David and 
others repeatedly erected altars at other places than 
the sanctuary. The law forbidding the erection of 
altars elsewhere than at the tabernacle must evi- 
dently have been adopted, not in Moses' time, but at 
a comparatively late period in Israel's history. 

The compilation of the Pentateuch, and in fact of 
the larger part of the Old Testament, was made 
probably during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, or 
shortly after Israel's return to Palestine after the 
Captivity or Exile. They were then very eager to 
start out aright and manifested every intention 
strictly to conform to what they believed to be 
Jehovah's laws. Their records and literature must 
have become very much scattered during the fifty 
years of their exile, a portion of them no doubt 
having been destroyed with the destruction of the 
Temple. They now rebuilt the Temple and we 



36 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

have reason to believe that they now gathered to- 
gether all the well authenticated records of their 
people that they could find, and these were compiled 
into what now constitutes the earlier Books of the 
Old Testament. 

During almost their entire history the Israelites 
were a grievously oppressed people. For a time 
they were slaves in Egypt. At no period except 
during the reigns of David and Solomon, were they 
in undisputed possession of Canaan or Palestine. 
There was an almost continuous warfare with vary- 
ing success between them and neighboring tribes. 
After the brief period of prosperity under Kings 
David and Solomon, they began to quarrel and fight 
among themselves, the northern tribes under the 
name of Israel withdrawing from Judah. Many 
years of cruel civil war weakened them to such an 
extent that they fell an easy prey to neighboring 
nations, who again and again subdued them and 
compelled them to pay heavy tribute. Then they 
were carried off into captivity and for 50 years they 
lived in exile. Soon after the Restoration there fol- 
lowed the long period of their subjection to the 
Greeks, and then came the heavy Roman yoke. 

With nations as well as with individuals we know 
that prosperity tends to promote worldliness and 
vice, while on the other hand adversity and affliction 
tend to discover and promote virtue and a deeply 
religious sense of feeling. It was very probably be- 
cause of their many misfortunes and dire oppres- 
sions that the Hebrews became an intently religious 
people and soon surpassed contemporaneous nations 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 37 

in spiritual advancement.^ They gradually rid them- 
selves of much of the grossness and crudity common 
to the religions of their neighbors. The tribal gods 
were largely regarded as territorial gods. It is not 
surprising therefore that the Hebrews at times fell 
to worshipping the gods of the country which they 
were occupying, the gods of Canaan. It was only 
for brief periods, however. The calamities that so 
often befell them came to be regarded as divine 
chastisement because of their forsaking Jehovah. 
There was no more turning to other gods after their 
return from captivity. From that time they wor- 
shipped Jehovah, and Jehovah only. A marked ad- 
vance over other nations was made when they 
strictly prohibited image-worship. Another marked 
advance was made when they began to regard 
Jehovah not only as simply looking after the 
material welfare of his people, but as a God of 
righteousness. They preserved their race intact by 
strictly forbidding intermarriage with other tribes 
and by the faithful observance of certain ceremonial 
rites. By preserving their race intact they preserved 
their religion intact. Although the Jews as a whole 
regarded Jehovah as a tribal or national god even 
up to and including the time of Jesus, there now and 
then arose a great man among them who proclaimed 
Jehovah as not only the god of the Jews but as the 
God and Father of all mankind. It was because of 
its superiority and eminent fitness that the Hebrew 
religion survived and developed into the greatest and 
best of all religions, the Christian religion. 



^Some writer has said: "The genius of the Hebrew nation was for 
religion, as the genius of Greece wa« for art, of Rome for law, and of 
England for comxa«rc«." 



38 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

These then are our reasons, by way of summary, 
for believing that the Old Testament, in place of 
having come to us thru divine revelation, is a com- 
pilation of the early records of the Hebrew race, 
composed largely of traditions and legends. God 
could not have revealed himself to the Israelites for 
the reason that they always had an imperfect con- 
ception of Him, regarding Him as God of their own 
people only, to the exclusion of all other peoples. 
Divine revelation made to only a small minority 
would have been an act of injustice to the vast 
majority of the inhabitants of the earth. The Old 
Testament, and the Pentateuch more particularly, 
cannot have come from God because it in many 
aspects ascribes a low moral character to God. The 
Old Testament is mistaken in the age of the earth 
and of man. The account of the Creation is a didac- 
tic poem and not a historical narrative. It could 
not have been divinely revealed for it was not 
original with the Hebrews. It is impossible to be- 
lieve that the all-knowing and unchangeable God 
should have grieved and repented that He had 
created man and that He should have destroyed by 
a deluge every human being on the face of the earth, 
save one man and his family. The story of the 
Deluge is full of impossibilities. The accounts of 
the Creation and of the Deluge contain a number of 
plain contradictions. If the numerous animal sacri- 
fices practiced by the Israelites had been ordained 
and exacted of them by Jehovah, as is claimed in 
the Pentateuch, great men of Israel, such as Samuel, 
Isaiah, Hosea and Micah, would not have spoken 
disparagingly of these same sacrifices. Israel's laws, 



THE OLD TESTAMENT 39 

in place of being of divine origin, were largely 
copied from and patterned after older laws that 
plainly were of human origin. Furthermore, not all 
the laws contained in the Pentateuch are of Mosaic 
origin as they do not constitute a uniform code of 
laws but are made up of three different codes, at 
least one of which was adopted by Israel long after 
the time of Moses. Many passages contained in the 
Pentateuch plainly indicate that it could not have 
been written by Moses but that it was composed or 
compiled at a period subsequent to the time of 
Moses. The Pentateuch bears strong internal evi- 
dence of its being a compilation of earlier Hebrew 
records. 



The Origin of Man 

There are only two theories as to the origin ol 
man; either he owes his existence to a special act 
of creation, or he is a development from the higher 
order of animals. 

The sole authority we have for the special crea- 
tion theory, or the creation of man by Divine fiat, is 
the account of the Creation as given in the first two 
chapters of the Book of Genesis. 

If the creation of the universe as narrated in 
Genesis is unhistoric, as we endeavored to prove 
in our previous article, if it simply constitutes a 
didactic poem, allegorical and legendary in charac- 
ter, then the creation of man by Divine fiat must 
likewise be unhistoric and legendary. It is part of 
the same poem. 

The details incident to the creation of man and 
woman as narrated in Genesis make it a very un- 
likely and improbable story. Jehovah takes a small 
quantity of dust and moulds it into the form of a 
man. He blows his breath into his nostrils and man 
becomes a living soul. He places the man in a gar- 
den, the garden of Eden, located rather indefinitely 
by the term "eastward." In the garden Jehovah 
plants "every tree that is pleasant to the sight and 
good for food," and among them are "the tree ot 
life" and "the tree of the knowledge of good and 
evil." He causes a deep sleep to fall upon the man 
and while he sleeps He takes out of him one of his 
ribs and from the rib He makes woman. After the 
temptation and the fall, consequent upon their eat- 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 41 

ing of the forbidden fruit of "the tree of the knowl- 
edge of good and evil," the man and the woman 
are driven out of the garden of Eden lest "they take 
also of the tree of life and eat and live forever." The 
ground is cursed because of their disobedience. And 
there is placed at the entrance to the garden of Eden 
"the cherubim and the flame of a sword" for the 
avowed purpose of preventing anyone from entering 
and from acquiring immortality by eating of the tree 
of life. The tree of life certainly was not destroyed 
or it would not have been necessary to have it 
guarded by a flaming sword. What became of it? 
The whole story is figurative and allegorical on the 
face of it, and was not intended as a narrative of 
actually occurring events. 

The greatest of sins is to do harm to a fellow 
man, — to defame him, to defraud him, to kill or do 
him other bodily injury. The sin that Adam and 
Eve are alleged to have committed, by eating of the 
forbidden fruit, is a very ordinary sin. They dis- 
obeyed, but they harmed no one but themselves. 
Many of us commit no less a sin — disobeying one of 
God's commands — almost every day of our lives. 
And yet for this sin, we are told, God cursed not 
only Adam and Eve but the whole human race down 
even to the present time. The punishment is so 
utterly out of proportion to the sin committed that 
our faith in the goodness and justice of God impels 
us to pronounce it false. 

If there truly was a garden of Eden as it is pic- 
tured in the Book of Genesis, and there would have 
been no disobedience by our first parents, mankind 
would have always remained in a stagnant condition 



42 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

as there was no incentive for progress. The story- 
gives us an erroneous idea as to labor by pronounc- 
ing it a curse. In place of labor being a curse, it is 
a blessing and the only true source of progress. 

The evident purpose of this allegorical tale was 
twofold, namely: 

First. — To account for the innate depravity of 
man. What there is of human depravity in this 
world, however, has its origin not in the disobedience 
of our first parents but in the animal nature that still 
remains in man. 

Second. — To reconcile the belief in a benevolent 
Creator with the much suffering and misery that ex- 
ist in this world. Its purpose was to teach that all 
the woe and sin in this world are solely man*s fault 
because of his disobedience. It is not difficult, how- 
ever, to account for the evil and pain in this life 
without laying it to man's fault, nor is it difficult to 
reconcile them with our belief that God is benevo- 
lent. To have made man incapable of sin would be 
to make him incapable of virtue. This he must 
acquire for himself, by free choice, by struggle and 
conquest, else there can be no virtue. There can be 
no merit in being good unless evil exists. It is only 
by unceasing warfare with evil that we become 
strong, courageous and self-reliant. The discipline 
of pain is necessary to our good health ; it serves as 
a signal, a warning, a beneficent guide. Sorrow is a 
wise moral teacher, and affliction is often a blessing. 
Not onl}^ is there sorrow in this life, there is also joy ; 
not only is there pain, there is also pleasure ; not only 
is there evil, there is also good. All of them are 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 43 

very necessary, else there can be no progressive 
development. 

That God should have made man full grown, in 
a minute we might say, does not at all conform with 
what we know of the Divine method. The earth, 
all scientists agree, was brought to its present form 
through a long process of development from orig- 
inal nebulae. The giant oak that looms heavenward 
and bids defiance to the storms grew from a little 
acorn. The individual, when he first sees the light, 
is a helpless babe and it takes years of growth before 
he attains the full stature and strength of manhood. 
In fact, all the handiwork of God that we see in the 
natural world around us, in place of having been 
brought into existence by Divine fiat, was made to 
go through a long process of making and developing 
before it reached its mature state. Nor was the first 
man brought into existence by Divine fiat. Analogy 
teaches us that he, too, went through a long process 
of development before he became a man. 

What is the evidence that man has been evolved 
from the higher order of animals ? There is the great 
resemblance in the bodily structure of man and of 
the higher order of animals. All the mental facul- 
ties of man are found in the animals in an incipient 
stage. And we have the testimony of palaeontology, 
of the rudimentary organs, and of embryology. We 
will take up each, in the order named. 

1. The Resemblance in the Bodily Structure of Man 
and of the Higher Order of Animals. 



44 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

Man is constructed on the same general plan as 
are all the other mammals. He does not possess a 
single organ which other mammals do not have. The 
eye, the ear, the mouth, the nostrils, the nerves, the 
•muscles, the digestive organs, the veins, the arteries 
and the heart are not only found in all, but are con- 
structed on the same general plan. The procreative 
organs and the process of procreation are very simi- 
lar. Every single bone in man's body has a corre- 
sponding bone in the higher order of animals. Take 
for example man's arms, the fore-feet of a horse, the 
wings of a bird and even the fins of a fish, all are of 
the same structural formation, every bone in either 
one having a counterpart in all the rest. Sleep which 
rests and refreshes is common to all. Man is liable 
to receive from the lower animals, and to communi- 
cate to them, certain diseases. Man's blood cannot 
be distinguished from that of the anthropoid apes. 
Even man's brain cannot be distinguished from that 
of the higher order of mammals by its substance or 
shape, but only by its size and development.^ 

2. All the Mental Faculties of Man Are Found 
in the Animals in an Incipient Stage. 

Many animals have excellent memories for per- 
sons and places. All animals manifestly enjoy ex- 



^"To anyone who considers the structure of man's body, even in the 
most superficial manner, it must be evident that it is the body of an 
animal, differing greatly, it is true, from the bodies of all other animals, 
but agreeing with them in all essential features. The body structure of 
man classes him as a vertebrate; the mode of suckling classes him as a 
mammal; his blood, his muscles and his nerves, the structure of his 
heart with its veins and arteries, his lungs and his whole respiratory 
and circulatory systems, all closely correspond to those of other mam- 
mals and are often almost identical. His senses are Identical with theirs 
and his organs of sense are the same in number and occupy the same 
relative position. . . . So it is improbable and almost ' inc6n- 
ceivable that man agreeing with them so closely in every detail of his 
structure, should have had some quite distinct mode of origin." — Darwin- 
ism, by Alfred Russell Wallace, Chap. S. 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 45 

citement, feel wonder, and may exhibit curiosity. 
Dogs, cats and horses have vivid dreams and thus 
must possess some power of imagination. They pos- 
sess some power of self-command, as is shown by 
the pointer or setter dog in abstaining from rushing 
upon its prey. Horses and dogs often show much 
affection for their master. It is a feeling akin to 
sympathy that leads a dog to fly at anyone who 
strikes his master. Attention, a mental faculty the 
most important for the intellectual progress of man, 
is shown by a cat when it sits for a long time by a 
hole watching intently for a mouse to appear. In fact 
many carnivorous animals will hide behind brush or 
stone for hours watching for prey. Animals of 
many kinds are social and have a feeling of love for 
one another and sympathize with each other's dis- 
tress or danger. The maternal affections are very 
strong in the females of many animals. Monkeys 
have been seen carefully to drive away the flies 
which bothered their infants, also to wash the faces 
of their young ones in a shallow stream. Some ani- 
mals manifest grief. The grief of female monkeys 
for the loss of their young is very intense. A dog 
shows a trace of a conscience, for he possesses the 
sense of shame. Of all faculties of the human mind, 
reason stands at the head. There is no question that 
animals possess some power of reasoning. Anim^als 
may constantly be seen to pause, deliberate and re- 
solve. Young animals can much easier be caught 
in traps than old animals. A monkey will use a 
stick as a lever. When an elephant is driven to a 
bridge he will pause and, if he does not think it safe 
to trust his weight to it, he cannot be made to cross 



46 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

it. The impassable gulf between man and the ani- 
mals is an illusion. The intelligence we see in ani- 
mals is the very root of all that is developed in the 
mind of man. There is not a single mental faculty 
of man that is not found in an incipient stage in the 
higher order of animals. There is of course a vast 
difference between the mind of a man and the mind 
of an animal, but it is a difference, not of kind, only 
in degree. As was stated by Professor Huxley, the 
naturalist, there is not any more difference between 
the mind of a savage and that of one of the higher 
order of animals than there is between the mind of 
a savage and that of a man civilized and educated. 

3. The Testimony of Palaeontology. 

The successive formations or strata of the earth's 
surface are like the pages of a book and reveal to us 
a fairly complete history of the different forms of 
life on our planet. The fossil remains found im- 
bedded in the stratified rocks conclusively show that 
life on earth began in its very simplest forms. In 
subsequent strata these simple and primitive forms 
become modified and gradually become more com- 
plex. Now and then a certain species is found to 
become extinct and does not subsequently appear, 
but a new and improved species takes its place. The 
newer or later the rock the more complex and im- 
proved are the different forms of life found imbedded 
in it. The vertebrate animals do not appear until 
after the invertebrates. The mammals appear sub- 
sequent to other vertebrates. The fossil remains of 
man and of the tools and weapons used by man ap- 
pear last of all. This slow and steady progression 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 47 

of animal life, as revealed by the stratified rocks, 
plainly indicates that the next higher order of ani- 
mals must have been a development from the order 
just below it, and that this development from lower 
to higher continued from the very lowest and sim- 
plest through the entire graduated scale of life until 
man was reached. 

4. Rudimentary Organs. 

Our bodies contain traces of organs now useless 
to us and no longer able to perform any function, 
but which are of constant use and are fully developed 
in different animals. Horses, dogs and hares, for 
example, point their ears and move them in different 
directions. Man has in his ears all the necessary 
muscles for doing the very same, but from long dis- 
use of these muscles he is now incapable of pointing 
or moving his ears. Why should these muscles be 
found in man? He has never used them. Their pres- 
ence in our ears cannot be accounted for in any other 
way than that we inherited them from our animal 
ancestors. Many species of dogs and rabbits under 
the influence of civilized life have long ceased prick- 
ing up their ears, thereby acquiring loosely-hanging 
ears, and as a consequence their auricular muscles 
have become rudimentary also. Some men can move 
and twitch the scalps of their heads. Many apes and 
monkeys can do the same. Other animals can move 
and twitch the skin over their entire body and this 
power is of great use to them. The appendix, so 
often causing appendicitis, is rudimentary in man. 
It is much larger in our plant-eating animals and 
with them Performs a verv useful function. Man 



48 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

possesses distinct bones of a tail underneath his 
skin. These organs, now rudimentary in us, were 
quite useful to our animal ancestors, who therefore 
possessed them in a perfect state. Under changed 
habits of life they became rudimentary from disuse 
in their descendants. Are they not an unmistakable 
indication of our animal ancestry, else why should 
we have them? Some one has aptly compared these 
rudimentary organs in man to the silent letters we 
find in many of our words. Although they are not 
used in the pronunciation, they usually help to reveal 
the origin of the word. 

5. Embryology. 

The science of embryology traces the development 
of man from the time of his conception to the time 
of his birth, and this growth and development of the 
babe while yet unborn furnishes one of the most 
marvelous chapters in biology or study of human 
life. Every child in the course of its growth before 
birth passes through every phase of animal life, from 
the lowest to the highest. By virtue of the force of 
hereditary habit, so to speak, the unborn child 
treads the same path which its animal ancestors fol- 
lowed from the unicellular condition to their present 
point of development, and not only man but all the 
higher order of animals show their ancestral origin 
in their embryonic life. 

Life begins with the ovum, a small spheroid of 
protoplasm. This germ is so exactly alike in all the 
animals and man, that even the microscope fails to 
trace any difference. The germ or embryo begins 
with a single cell. It grows, as do the lowest forms 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 49 

of life, by continually adding additional cells. In 
time these cells separate themselves into different 
parts or segments, and from these segments origi- 
nate the different organs of the body. 

The human form does not begin as a human 
form. It begins as an animal and for a long time 
there is nothing in it wearing the remotest resem- 
blance to humanity. What meets the eye, as its 
growth progresses, is a vast procession of lower 
forms of life. For some time it cannot be discrimi- 
nated from that of the very lowest order of animals. 
For a still longer period it resembles the embryo of 
all other vertebrate animals, not merely in outward 
form but in all essentials of structure, and not until 
in its very last stages of development does the hu- 
man embryo differ from that of the anthropoid apes. 

The remarkable strength of an infant in its fingers 
is a relic brought with it from its ape ancestry, who 
acquired the strength from climbing trees. That the 
ancient progenitors of man once lived an aquatic life 
is shown by the ear, which as shown in its embryo 
state is a development of the first gill cleft and its 
surrounding parts. There is in man still a relic of 
the tail, which at a certain period in its embryonic 
life is as prominent in man as it is in any other ver- 
tebrate. The six-months-old human embryo is cov- 
ered with fine wool-like hair all over the body except 
on palms of hand and soles of feet. Thus man in 
his embryonic life shows traces of his animal origin 
that cannot be misinterpreted. While yet unborn 
he passes through the entire scale of human life. On 



50 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

no other theory can we account for it than that he 
has been evolved from the higher order of animals.^ 

In the development of plant and animal Hfe we 
observe four great truths or fundamental principles : 
First, the tendency of every species of plant and ani- 
mal to multiply in geometrical ratio. Second, a con- 
tinuous struggle for existence. Third, the tendency 
of the offspring to inherit qualities from their par- 
ents, called the law of heredity. Fourth, the off- 
spring are never exactly alike, called the law of varia- 
tion. We will briefly consider them in the order 
named. 

First. The tendency of every species of plant and 
animal to multiply in geometrical ratio. We all 
know how very prolific in seeds nearly all plants are 
and how rapidly they multiply, if conditions are at 
all favorable for the seeds to sprout and to grow. 
Any ordinary bird, like the robin or blackbird, will 
lay on an average ten eggs a year. If a single pair 
of robins or blackbirds were placed on an island and 
were there allowed to breed unmolested by other 
animals, with plenty of food and in a favorable cli- 
mate, the increase from this single pair in ten years' 
time would amount to more than twenty million 
birds. Even the larger animals, which breed com- 
paratively slowly, increase enormously when placed 
under favorable conditions. Columbus in his sec- 
ond voyage to America left a few black cattle at St. 
Domingo and these ran wild and increased in num- 



*The above data on embryology have been obtained from the following 
works: "The Descent or Origin of Man," by Chas. Darwin; "The Evolu- 
tion of Man," by Prof. Haeckel; "The Ascent of Man," bv Henry Drum- 
mond; "The Whence and the Whither," by John M. Tyler; "In the 
Beginning," by T. Guilbert. 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 51 

ber so rapidly that 27 years afterward there were 
found four herds of them having from 4,000 to 8,000 
in each herd. The elephant produces young only 
about once in ten years, generally only one at a birth, 
Mr. Darwin estimated that the progeny of a single 
pair of elephants after the lapse of 750 years would 
number about 19 million. 

Second. The continuous struggle for existence. 
This tendency in both plants and animals enor- 
mously to increase in numbers, is largely prevented 
by the great struggle for existence that is constantly 
going on. Every individual plant and animal is ex- 
posed to a continuous succession of perils from the 
time of birth till it succumbs in death. All the plants 
of a country are at war with each other, each one 
struggling to occupy ground at the expense of its 
neighbor. If weeds are allowed to grow unchecked 
in a field or garden, they will in time choke out and 
destroy the plants under cultivation. Besides the 
direct competition among plants themselves, they 
are liable to be destroyed by the action of the ele- 
ments in the form of droughts or floods, frosts or 
excessive heat. Almost all plants, too, are under 
constant exposure to destruction by animals. The 
birds destroy the buds, the caterpillars the leaves, 
the weevil the seeds, the wireworms the roots, and 
the very greatest destroyers of plant life are the 
herbivorous animals. 

In animals it is the eggs or the very young that 
suflfer the most from their various enemies. There 
is an incessant war against insects by insectivorous 
birds and reptiles, as well as by other insects. Great 



52 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

destroyers of all kinds of animals are excessive cold, 
famine and floods. The carnivorous animals con- 
stantly feed upon and destroy not only the herbivor- 
ous animals, but other carnivorous animals. There 
is a constant and daily search after food, the failure 
to obtain which means weakness or starvation ; and 
there is a constant effort to escape destruction by 
enemies, failure in which means death. The stren- 
uous struggle for existence never ceases, on the part 
of both plants and animals. 

Third. The Law of Heredity. The offspring is 
always substantially like its parents. Any peculiar- 
ity of the parents will likely appear in their progeny. 
We have inherited from our parents peculiarities of 
form, of size, of complexion, color of hair, and sus- 
ceptibility to particular diseases. Even peculiar 
mental and moral traits of the parent are likely to 
appear in the offspring. 

Fourth. The Law of Variation. While the off- 
spring is in the main like the parents, in some par- 
ticulars there is always a difference, so that the off- 
spring is never in all respects just like the parents. 
No two children in the same family are exactly alike. 
The same is true of animals. In each litter of kittens 
or puppies, even when alike in color, differences of 
some kind can always be discovered on close obser- 
vation, as difference in size, in proportion of their 
bodies and limbs, in length and texture of hair, and 
in disposition. Each possesses an individual coun- 
tenance of its own almost as varied, when closely 
studied, as that of a human being. Good shepherds 
usually recognize and distinguish almost every mem- 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 53 

ber of their flocks. We find just as much of a variety 
in the vegetable kingdom. "In every bed of flowers 
or of vegetables we shall find, if we look closely, 
that there are countless small differences, in the size, 
in the mode of growth, in the shape or color of the 
leaves, in the form, color, or markings of the flowers, 
or in the size, form, color or flavor of the fruit."^ 

It is on these four fundamental truths — the ten- 
dency in plants and animals to multiply in geomet- 
rical ratio, the constant struggle for life, the law of 
variation and the law of heredity — that Darwin based 
his great theory of natural selection, whereby to ac- 
count for the gradual development of an existing 
order of plants or animals into a higher order of 
plants or animals, or for the creation of new species. 

If there were nothing to check the great tendency 
in plants and animals rapidly to multiply in number, 
the world soon would not be able to hold and sup- 
port them all. A constant struggle for existence 
inevitably follows, because of this high rate of in- 
crease in all organic beings. There are many rivals 
living upon the same kind of food, causing relentless 
and never-ceasing competition. All of our carni- 
vorous animals are constantly preying upon other 
animals, necessitating their keeping on constant 
guard for fear of being devoured. Even seemingly 
harmless creatures like our smaller birds are con- 
tinually destroying life — seed and insects. Much 
life, too, is destroyed by famine, flood, and excessive 
cold or heat. So that every individual, of animal or 
plant, is exposed to a continuous series of perils 
along the whole course of its existence. 



^"Darwinism," by Alfred Russel Wallace, Chap. 4. 



54 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

By virtue of the law of variation — no two indi- 
viduals of any species being exactly alike — it is very 
obvious that some individuals in every generation 
will be better adapted than others to conquer in the 
great struggle for life. They may be protected 
against extreme cold by a warmer coat of fur or 
feathers, they may be able by greater strength or 
greater cunning to secure food, they may have longer 
necks to reach food on trees, they may escape from 
carnivorous animals by greater swiftness or be able 
to hide from them more successfully by a modifica- 
tion in color of the outside of their body, rendering 
them less conspicuous, or they may be able to repel 
their attack by greater strength or courage. If in 
any way any individuals of a certain species become 
possessed of certain variations which render them 
better adapted for success in the struggle for life, 
these individuals — by virtue of the survival of the 
fittest — will likely survive to maturity and will there- 
fore have the opportunity to propagate their species. 
They will be naturally selected to breed the coming 
generation. And by virtue of the law of heredity 
their offspring will inherit, in greater or less degree, 
those favorable peculiarities or variations which 
have given the parents victory in the great struggle 
for life. Whenever it occurs that from generation to 
generation, which may extend over centuries, there 
is a constant and progressive accumulation of these 
small variations, all tending in one direction, the off- 
spring will then in time become so entirely different 
from the original parents that they will constitute 
the beginning of a new and distinct species. 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 55 

What takes place in nature, and what Darwin calls 
Natural Selection, man does in a measure likewise 
accomplish by what is called artificial selection. If 
he desires beef cattle, he will select the heaviest he 
has for breeding; if he desires dairy cattle, he will 
select for breeding those that yield the largest quan- 
tity and richest quality of milk. It is by the repeated 
selection of any desired variation or group of varia- 
tions, that our fine sorts of flowers, fruits and veget- 
ables have been obtained. It is in this way that we 
have secured our choice breeds of cattle — the Here- 
fords, the Holsteins, etc. — and our choice breeds of 
poultry — the Leghorns, the Wyandottes, etc. And it 
is in this way that we have secured our heavy pon- 
derous draft horses, our wonderfully swift race 
horses, and our numerous varieties of dogs and of 
pigeons. 

It is a quite common belief that this improvement 
in our cultivated plants and in our domestic animals 
is due to crossing, but this is an altogether mistaken 
idea. It is true, crossing is sometimes resorted to in 
order to obtain a combination of qualities found in 
two distinct breeds, or to increase the constitutional 
vigor, but it is used for no other purpose. Any hor- 
ticulturist or breeder of cattle or of poultry well 
knows that crossing leads to instability of character, 
and it is therefore seldom used in producing fixed 
and well-marked races. "Purity of breed, with re- 
peated selection of the best varieties of that breed, 
is the foundation of all improvement in our domestic 
animals and cultivated plants."* 

^'•Darwinism," by Alfred Ruisel Wallace, Chap. 4. 



56 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

An objection sometimes raised against the evolu- 
tion theory is that a new and distinct species of 
plants or animals has never yet within man's actual 
experience been produced either by natural or arti- 
ficial selection. Man has been able to produce a 
great variety, for example, of pigeons or of dogs, but 
they are still pigeons, they are still dogs, and no new 
species have resulted. Nor have we, it is said, seen 
any new species of wild animals or of uncultivated 
plants appear in the natural world. This may be 
true, but we must remember that the historic period 
of man in this world has been very short indeed 
when compared with the age of life on our planet, 
and, furthermore that during the short period that 
we have any written record of life on earth, the 
physical environment has been comparatively stable. 
It was not always so. There was a time within our 
earth's existence when tremendous changes were 
constantly taking place. What vast modifications in 
the physical environment must have taken place, for 
example, during what is known as the glacial age, 
and it was during one of the glacial epochs that man 
is believed to have first appeared on earth. How 
wonderfully luxuriant must all vegetation have 
grown during another epoch in our world's history 
when our vast coal beds were formed, and of what 
mammoth form were many of the animals of that 
period. There was a time when large portions ot 
our continents, Europe, Asia and America, consti- 
tuted the bottoms of oceans, and portions of what 
are now covered by ocean were once high and dry 
land. These great climatic and geographic changes 
must naturally have been accompanied by great and 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 57 

corresponding modifications in all kinds of life on the 
globe. It was during this long unsettled and ever- 
changing period, it is believed, that the wonderful 
development in living forms took place, beginning 
with the very lowest and gradually rising in the scale 
until man was reached. After the physical features 
of our globe's surface became in a great measure 
fixed and settled, then the environment of all forms 
of life became comparatively stable and no evolution 
of new species may have resulted. There has been 
wonderful development since then, but it has been 
mainly along psychical, and not physical, lines. 

We are sometimes told that variations in animals 
or plants always are small in amount and that, in- 
stead of being cumulative from generation to genera- 
tion, they again gradually disappear by promiscuous 
crossing with other individuals of the same species 
which do not possess the variations in question. 
Variations certainly cannot well become cumulative 
when those possessed of the variations do not be- 
come separated from the common stock. But dur- 
ing- the time that our earth was subject to great geo- 
graphical changes, how often must it have occurred 
that small groups of animals or plants became sep- 
arated from the parent stock by the rise of mountain 
ranges or by a strip of land between them becoming 
submerged. Small groups of animals were also un- 
doubtedly continually separating themselves from 
the main body of their species by voluntary migra- 
tion to a higher or lower altitude or into a more dry 
or wet district. 

Small groups therefore must repeatedly have be- 



58 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

come separated from the parent stock, and by reason 
of the change they were no longer in harmony with 
their environment. A geographical change is most 
always accompanied by a change of climate, a 
change in food, and a change in the habits and modes 
of life. There will also be competition with new 
rivals and exposure to attack from new enemies. In 
the constant effort necessarily made to adapt them- 
selves to their new environment, whatever variations 
appear that give the possessors of them an adantage 
in the struggle for life will cause them to survive, 
while the rest will gradually die out. The group in 
which they appear being cut off from the parent 
stock, not only once but a number of times at suc- 
cessive stages of development, these variations will 
become cumulative from generation to generation 
for long periods of time, and in this way it is very 
probable that new and distinct species have been 
formed. It is well to bear in mind also that forms 
of life at an early period were naturally more plastic 
than they are now, also that a change brought about 
in only one organ of the body, by virtue of the laws 
of correlation, will tend to produce marked and cor- 
responding changes in the other organs of the body. 

Natural selection is not always a progressive 
force. It may oftentimes become a conservative 
force. For instance, if a certain species has become 
substantially adapted to its environment, then there 
is no need of a change and whatever variations ap- 
pear in certain individuals of the species will likely 
be injurious. In such cases natural selection will 
act as a conservative force. All variations that ap- 
pear, which diverge widely from the parent stock, 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 59 

will be stamped out by reason of their being injur- 
ious, and the species, in place of changing, will keep 
true from generation to generation to its specific 
character. This is the principal reason why many 
of the lower forms of life still exist to this day. 

The order of animals the most nearly allied to 
man are the anthropoid apes. There are four dis- 
tinct kinds of anthropoids : the Gibbons, the Orang- 
utans, the Chimpanzees and the Gorillas.^ All of 
them have the same number of teeth as man. Their 
arms are always longer than their legs. Their long 
arms they probably acquired by climbing trees and 
by gathering food from limbs to which they could 
not trust their weight. Their hands are provided 
with longer or shorter thumbs. The great toe of the 
foot is always smaller than in man and can be op- 
posed, like the thumbs, to the rest of the foot. None 
of them have tails. 

The Gibbons are found scattered over the islands 
of Java, Sumatra and Borneo and in Malacca, Siam 
and parts of Hindoostan. They average 3 feet in 
height. All day long they haunt the tops of tall 
trees. They possess a prodigious volume of voice. 
They readily take to the erect posture. The females 
carry their young to the waterside and there wash 
their faces, in spite of resistance and cries. They 
usually drink by dipping their fingers in water and 
then licking them. They are very tricky and pet- 
tish, and yet not devoid of a certain conscience. 

The Orangutan are found in the low flat plains 
and dense forests of Sumatra and Borneo. They 



^The data here given relative to the anthropoid apes have been taken 
from "Man's Place in Nature," by Prof. Thomas H. Huxley. 



60 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

average 4 feet in height and often attain an age of 
50 years. The young are of slow growth and remain 
unusually long under their mother's protection. The 
females are not adults until 15 years of age. They 
build rude huts in trees — not much more than a nest. 
They go to bed at about 5 o'clock and get up at about 
9. When the night is cold they cover themselves 
with green leaves. The bones of the pelvis are not 
expanded like those of other apes, but are more like 
those of man. When they walk or run, their very 
long arms are but little bent, thus giving them an 
almost erect posture. Their food consists princi- 
pally of figs, blossoms and young leaves. They are 
very wild and sly, sluggish and melancholy, and they 
possess an immense strength. When approached 
they endeavor to hide or escape along the topmost 
branches of the trees, breaking off and throwing 
down the boughs as they proceed. Their hear- 
ing is very acute and they have considerable intelli- 
gence. Some of them possess a rudimentary nail on 
the great toe. In the crania of these individuals we 
find remarkable difference of form, proportion and 
dimension, no two being exactly alike. 

The Chimpanzee are found in Western Africa. 
They are under 5 feet in height. Their natural posi- 
tion is on all fours, though they are sometimes seen 
to stand and to walk. They are very filthy in their 
habits, but manifest much intelligence. When shot 
at and wounded they give a sudden screech, not un- 
like that of a human being in sudden and acute dis- 
tress, and they have been seen to apply leaves and 
grass to the wound to stop the flow of blood. 

The Gorilla inhabits the interior of Lower Guinea. 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 61 

Its average height is 5 feet and average v^reight 145 
pounds. It is thickly covered with coarse black hair, 
but the skin of the face and ears is naked and of a 
dark brown color. Its hair becomes gray with age — 
has large eyes, broad and flat nose, and prominent 
lips and chin. It has a crest of hair on the head and 
has the power of moving the scalp forward and back. 
The neck is short, thick and hairy, and the chest and 
shoulders are very broad. The Gorilla is much in- 
clined to assume the erect posture, though it stoops 
or bends forward considerably, and its gait is shuf- 
fling. Their rude huts are made of sticks of wood and 
leafy branches and are supported by the crotches and 
limbs of trees. They afford little shelter and are oc- 
cupied only at night. They live in bands. The fe- 
males much outnumber the males, and there is but 
one adult male in each band. When the young 
males grow up, a contest takes place for mastery and 
the strongest, by killing and driving out the others, 
establishes himself as the head of the community. 
They are very ferocious, never running away from 
man as does the Chimpanzee. When the male sees 
a supposed enemy approach, he gives a terrific yell, 
which causes the females and the young quickly to 
disappear, and he then approaches the enemy in 
great fury, pouring out his horrid cries in quick suc- 
cession. He is much better adapted for the erect 
posture than are the other anthropoids, and he al- 
ways assumes an erect posture when making an 
attack. 

The anthropoid which comes the nearest to man 
is the Gorilla. He has the same number of vertebrae 
in his spinal column as has man, the same number 



62 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

and kind of teeth, often assumes the erect posture, 
and has no tail. In fact, the structural differences 
which separate man from the Gorilla are not so great 
as those which separate the Gorilla from the lower 
apes. It is true, in the size and shape of the skull 
there is a large difference between man and the Gor- 
illa. The capacity of no human cranium is less than 
62 cubic inches, while no Gorilla has over 35 cubic 
inches. However, there is even a greater difference 
in the volume of the cranial cavity of the different 
races of mankind. The largest human skull that has 
been measured contained 114 cubic inches and the 
smallest 62 cubic inches. So that even in the im- 
portant matter of cranial capacity men differ more 
widely from one another than they do from the an- 
thropoid apes. 

Man's ancestors very probably either sprang from 
one of the anthropoids above named, or constituted 
a collateral branch which, together with the other 
anthropoids, all came from the same family stock. 

Three things very probably occurred before man 
appeared: His immediate ancestors must have be- 
come isolated from the parent stock ; they must have 
become subjected to considerable of a change in en- 
vironment, and the change was from a milder to a 
colder and more vigorous climate. 

Our ancestral group became separated from the 
parent stock either by voluntary migration or by 
reason of a sudden change in the earth's surface, 
which was of common occurrence during the glacial 
period. They were subjected to great change of 
environment by going either farther north or into a 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 63 

higher altitude. All life being more vigorous in a 
cold climate, it became a harder task for our ances- 
tral group to defend themselves from enemies, and 
they themselves in time became of more vigorous 
constitution. Food being not as plenty in a cold as 
in a tropical climate, nor as easy to acquire, it con- 
stantly exercised what mental faculties they pos- 
sessed to obtain their daily sustenance. While they 
were vigorously endeavoring to adapt themselves to 
their new environment, natural selection with them 
became a decidedly progressive force. All such var- 
iations appearing from time to time, which gave the 
possessors an advantage in the constant struggle for 
life, were naturally preserved and were transmitted 
by the possessors of them to their descendants. All 
those who were unable to adapt themselves to the 
change of environment — and probably successive 
changes of environment — gradually died ofif, leaving 
no descendants. The conditions were such that the 
variations which were advantageous became cumu- 
lative from generation to generation and their pro- 
gressive development was constant and continuous. 
The parent stock from which our ancestral group 
became isolated were subjected to no great change 
and remained substantially in harmony with their 
environment. Variations were of no particular ad- 
vantage and therefore natural selection with them 
was, not a progressive, but a conservative force. For 
this reason anthropoids still exist to this day, 
although they are not very numerous. 

One of the great factors which started our ances- 
tral group on its wonderful career of progress, was 



64 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

the development of the hand. It was by reason of 
their living mostly in trees that they came to make a 
difference between their two pairs of limbs, the fore- 
feet and the hindfeet. The forefeet they began to 
use for grasping and handling and the hindfeet for 
support of the body. The forefeet, thus largely set 
free from the work of support and locomotion, grad- 
ually became a tool-using organ. The first tool or 
weapon used was the broken branch of a tree. It 
was the father of all clubs. The blunt stick led to 
the pointed stick, the club to the spear. The differ- 
entiation of the two pairs of limbs, the development 
of the forefeet into the hands, introduced a change 
the importance of which we cannot well overesti- 
mate. The hand as a tactile tool-using organ became 
the servant of the brain for trying all kinds of ex- 
periments and kept the mental faculties constantly 
active. Its influence in developing the brain must 
have been very great. 

Another important factor in our ancestors' prog- 
ress was the acquirement of the habit of standing 
erect. One can best use the club by standing erect, 
and we may well believe that they had much use for 
the club, as their enemies were superior in vigor and 
their food more difficult to obtain that had been the 
case before they became isolated from the parent 
stock. Even while they were simply on the lookout 
for enemies and for food, they found the erect pos- 
ture a great advantage. 

The erect posture enabled the hands to be devoted 
entirely to prehension, which formerly had largely 
been the work of the jaws, and this caused a gradual 
change in the jaw and teeth and consequently in the 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 65 

entire formation of the face. "Man undoubtedly 
owes his heaven-erected face to the struggle for 
life." 

The assumption of the upright posture brought on 
a number of very important changes in other parts 
of the body, more particularly in the vertebral col- 
umn, from the head down to the girdle of the pelvis. 
It enlarged the head, it enlarged and broadened out 
the chest and the shoulders, gave better breathing 
power, and was the means of progressively develop- 
ing that important organ of speech, the larynx. 

The development and the gradual perfecting of 
the larynx soon caused man far to outstrip his ani- 
mal ancestors, for it made him capable of modulating 
and articulating his voice and speech. Traces of 
language are already found in the animals. All 
social animals communicate to one another very sim- 
ple thoughts or perceptions. An illustration of this 
are the calls and warning cries of mammals and of 
birds. Who has not heard a hen, when a hawk flies 
overhead, give a warning cry to her little chicks who 
in consequence quickly run and hide under her 
wings. Dogs and horses will beg for food.. But the 
language of animals is simply disjointed calls or 
cries. It was not until our ancestors, by reason of 
their erect posture, had acquired a fully developed 
larynx that they were able to articulate their words. 
At first they probably named only a few familiar 
objects. The next step was the naming of a few 
familiar qualities, as hot, cold, sweet, sour, and so 
on. Then they came to connect the name of an ob- 
ject with the name of a quality, as the sun is hot, 
the apple is sour, and in this way they acquired the 



66 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

power of predicating and of forming sentences. We 
still have savages, the Bushmen for example, whose 
vocabulary does not extend beyond the names of the 
most familiar objects and of the most familiar quali- 
ties, and who cannot count beyond three, having no 
names for any number beyond "three." 

The use of language, crude as it no doubt was for 
a great many years, must have exerted a tremendous 
influence in the evolution of the human race. Prior 
to the use of language whatever gain was made in 
man's development could be transmitted to the suc- 
ceeding generation only by heredity, but now all the 
knowledge and experience of the older generation 
could be transmitted to the younger through the use 
of language. Its influence also in improving and 
developing the mind must have been very great. 

The gradual lengthening of the plastic period of 
infancy, or of the period when parental care is 
needed, was still another great factor that materially 
helped in the progress made by our ancestors. In 
the lower and simpler forms of animal life the oflf- 
spring come into this world at once fully equipped 
for the battle of life. The snapping turtle, for ex- 
ample, snaps with decisive vigor the moment it is 
born. There is no such thing as infancy in the lower 
orders of life. But as the nervous system and other 
organisms become more complex and as the individ- 
ual experience becomes more varied and a higher 
degree of intelligence is needed, there is not suffi- 
cient time during the embryo state for the young to 
emerge therefrom fully equipped, and they come into 
the world to a large extent helpless annd dependent 
on a mother's care. At the same time its intelligence 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 67 

is far more plastic and it is more teachable, than is 
the case with the lower animal that has no babyhood. 

Parental care began with the warm-blooded birds 
and with the mammals. With the lower mammals 
the infancy period is comparatively short and it grad- 
ually lengthens until man is reached. With the 
lengthening of infancy, the period of maternal help 
and watchfulness lengthens correspondingly. With 
the mother of man maternal affection has become a 
permanent part of her nature, lasting all through 
life. The lengthened period of infancy and of paren- 
tal affection gave rise to the family and to the per- 
manency of the marital relation. Permanent mar- 
riage, however, exists only to a degree among sav- 
ages. Strict monogamy is a comparatively late 
achievement of civilization.^ 

The prolonged duration of infancy, together with 
the use of language, must now have been of incal- 
culable benefit to the growing youth. By the time 
he reaches mature years he has acquired from the 
parents the full benefit of their life-long experience. 

The greatest factor of all in the progress made by 
our ancestors was the increase of intelligence or the 
development of the mind. 

The mind started on its wonderful career of de- 
velopment the moment the hand began to be used 
as a tool-using organ. The mental faculties were 
now being constantly exercised and developed, first 
in the use of the club and later in the use of rude 
tools and implements made of rough stone, relics of 
which are still found imbedded in the stratified 



^"Through Nature To God," by John Fiske, page 99, 



68 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

rocks. It was by chipping flint stones undoubtedly 
that they first discovered how to make a fire. As 
they gradually became more proficient in the use of 
tools and weapons, they were better enabled to pro- 
tect themselves from their enemies and to provide 
themselves with sufficient food for their sustenance. 
New situations were continually arising which taxed 
and tended to develop their intellectual powers. 
In time they learned to use the skins of animals for 
clothing and to cover themselves with at night. They 
built for themselves strong, rude huts to live in, 
which protected them from the attacks of enemies 
and from the inclemencies of the weather. 

These, then, were the evolutionary forces or fac- 
tors which actively co-operated together to push our 
ancestral race onward and upward : The differentia- 
tion of the two pairs of limbs, the hands and the feet ; 
the development of the hand by which it became a 
tool-using organ and the servant of the brain; the 
erect posture ; the development of the larynx, articu- 
late speech and the use of language; prolonged in- 
fancy and parental affection ; and the increase of in- 
telligence and development of the mind. 

One factor set another in operation which in turn 
reacted upon the first. The co-operation of all was 
very essential to produce man. Had a single one 
failed, the result probably would have been diflferent. 

With gradual improvements in their weapons and 
gradually acquired skill in the use of them, and with 
gradually improved and better protected abodes to 
live in, there approached the important epoch when 



THE ORIGIN OF MAN 69 

our ancestors began to obtain mastery and dominion 
over all other animals. 

With a better and more constant supply of suit- 
able food, and with suitable clothing and shelter to 
protect themselves from the inclemencies of the 
weather, they could now better adapt themselves to 
the changing universe and keep more in harmony 
with their environment, and there was no particular 
need of further improvement in man's physical type 
of body. Our ancestors now began to sustain them- 
selves and improve their condition, not so much by 
any physical characteristic, as by mental exercise of 
skill and craft. A new and greater act was thus 
opening in the drama of life. 

The all important epoch was reached when man's 
evolution was striking an entirely new path. Hav- 
ing in a large measure acquired dominion over all 
other animals and having by means of clothing and 
shelter and much improved methods of obtaining his 
food substantially adapted himself to his environ- 
ment, and there being consequently no particular 
need of further improvement in his physical body, 
the development of the mind from now on in a very 
large measure took the place of the development of 
the body. Natural selection was now taking advan- 
tage of every psychical or mental variation in our 
ancestral family and was making little change in the 
physical body except so far as to aid in the general 
advancement along intellectual lines. The great 
chasm thus gradually appeared that divides man 
from the lower animals. 

Since that new departure, when development of 
body was largely superseded by development of 



70 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

mind, our Creator's chief purpose very manifestly 
has been, not in bringing forth or developing a new 
and higher type of physical body, a new and higher 
species, but in expanding and perfecting the psych- 
ical attributes of the one creature in whose life those 
attributes had begun to acquire predominance. Thus 
in the long series of organic beings Man is the last. 
When this masterpiece was once reached in the evo- 
lution of life, nothing more could be done than to 
perfect it. 



Miracles 

A miracle is evidence of superhuman effort. It not 
alone excites wonder, it is an effect which cannot 
possibly result from natural causes. The telephone, 
the phonograph, the wireless message and all other 
late-day wonders have been brought about in full 
accord with and by virtue of the operation of natural 
laws, but a miracle transcends the power of all nat- 
ural agencies and requires a special act and mani- 
festation of Divine power. 

He who has created all that exists and who rules 
the universe, undoubtedly has the power to do mir- 
acles. We know, however, that the universe is gov- 
erned by certain and fixed laws. So far as our ex- 
perience extends the Almighty never acts arbitrarily, 
never deviates from these laws. All that He does is 
in strict accord with and a direct result from the 
operation of the fundamental laws He has ordained. 
A miracle in its nature not resulting from natural 
causes, is contrary to all that we know of God's ways 
and methods. There is therefore a strong presump- 
tion against them, and before we can place belief in 
the miracles of the Bible we are justified in requiring 
that this presumption against them be overcome by 
the strongest kind of proof. 

What proof have we that Jesus of Nazareth 
wrought miracles? If he came with a divine mes- 
sage to the people not only of his own time but of 
all future ages, and authenticated this message with 
miracles, it is natural to expect that in order to avoid 



72 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

all doubt and dispute that might arise in future 
years, he certainly would have taken the precaution 
to have the message and the miracles carefully pre- 
served by having written records made of them. The 
universal experience is that whatever a person may 
say or do is liable to be misinterpreted and miscon- 
strued unless it is at once reduced to writing. But 
no written record was made of the Nazarene's teach- 
ings and alleged miracles during his lifetime, nor for 
many years afterward. For at least thirty years they 
were dependent for preservation on nothing more 
than the memory of a few witnesses. It is ques- 
tionable whether the evidence of a single eye-wit- 
ness can be furnished in their support. They are 
dependent for proof very largely if not altogether on 
hearsay testimony. Can this kind of proof be 
deemed sufficient to overcome the strong presump- 
tion that exists against them? 

Why did not Jesus have written records made so 
that future generations could have no doubt as to 
what he said or did, and why was no written record 
of his life and teachings made by his disciples imme- 
diately after his death? It was because he and his 
disciples fully believed that the end of the world was 
very near. According to Matthew the very first 
words of his message were, ''Repent ye, for the king- 
dom of Heaven is at hand." That he was of the 
firm conviction that the world would soon come to 
an end is very evident from his words as given in 
Matthew 16:27, 28: "For the Son of Man shall 
come in the glory of His Father with His angels; 
and then shall He render unto every man according 
to his deeds. Verily I say unto you, there are some 



MIRACLES 73 

of them that stand here, who shall in no wise taste 
of death, till they see the Son of Man coming in his 
kingdom." Such being the belief of the Nazarene, 
he saw no need of leaving a written record of his 
teachings and miracles. There would be no future 
generations to leave them to. 

It is a very singular fact that the age of miracles 
was an age of much superstition and that as man 
became more enlightened the miracles ceased. Dur- 
ing and prior to the time of Jesus there seemed noth- 
ing unreasonable about a miracle. It was then not 
known that the universe was governed by fixed laws 
and orderly processes, and little distinction was 
made between the natural and the supernatural. All 
of the early religions, save the Confucian, abounded 
in miracles. The gospels of the New Testament 
speak of others besides Jesus and his disciples, who 
are alleged to have performed miracles. (Mark 9 :38- 
40; Luke 9 :49, 50; Matthew 7 :22.) It was a credu- 
lous and superstitious age and the belief in all kinds 
of omens, charms and miraculous signs was well 
nigh universal. Occult influences were believed to 
be all of the time at work even in the common every- 
day affairs of life shaping the lives and destinies of 
men. Miracles did not cease with the deaths of 
Jesus and his disciples. In the writings of the Holy 
Fathers of the Church we frequently read of them 
as having occurred for centuries afterward. For ex- 
ample, two monks living in the fifth century after 
Christ, Hilarion and Paul by name, are said to have 
performed many miracles fully as wonderful as those 
attributed to Jesus, as is stated in the biographies of 
the two monks written by Jerome, one of the saints 



74 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

of the Church. When did miracles cease? They 
gradually ceased as superstition waned and people 
became more enlightened. One of the factors that 
caused them to cease were the wonderful discoveries 
made by Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler. The rep- 
resentatives of the church realizing that these start- 
ling discoveries would greatly jeopardize the faith in 
miracles, condemned the discoverers in severe terms. 
When Copernicus proclaimed that the earth revolved 
around the sun, and not the sun around the earth, 
Martin Luther denounced him in these words : 

"People give ear to an upstart astrologer who 
strove to show that the earth revolves, not the 
heavens or the firmament, the sun or the moon. 
Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some 
new system, which of all systems is of course the 
very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire 
science of astronomy, but Sacred Scripture tells us 
that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and 
not the earth." 

And at about the same time the Holy Inquisition 
made the following pronunciamento : 

"The first proposition that the sun is the center 
and does not revolve around the earth is foolish, ab- 
surd, false in theology, and heretical, because ex- 
pressly contrary to Holy Scripture ; and the second 
proposition that the earth is not the center, but re- 
volves about the sun, is absurd, false in philosophy 
and, from a theological point of view, opposed to the 
true faith." 

If the Almighty gave men power to perform mir- 
acles through all the ages down to a comparatively 
recent period, why does He not do so still? There 



MIRACLES 75 

never was as much sincere doubt and unbelief as 
there is now. There never was as much earnest 
seeking after the truth. In our religious creeds and 
dogmas are embodied a number of tenets which 
many of our most reasonable and intelligent minds 
cannot sanction. There is a great falling away from 
the so-called orthodox faith. Its opponents are car- 
rying one position after another. Miracles that are 
so extensively denied as the figments of a barbarous 
and superstitious age, would accomplish an incal- 
culable amount of good at this very time in support 
of the Faith now in such jeopardy. 

However, if it is God's purpose to have man work 
out his own salvation, unaided save by the reasoning 
faculty with which He has endowed him and by the 
unmistakable manifestations of the uniform and un- 
changeable laws governing the universe, then we 
may well believe that He has not manifested Himself 
thru miracles and theophanies in any former age, 
and that He will not do so now in the present crisis. 

The Gospel miracles, if they actually occurred, 
failed in accomplishing the purpose for which they 
were intended. Their avowed purpose was to au- 
thenticate the Nazarene's divine mission and mes- 
sage to the world. The very wonderful miracles he 
is alleged to have wrought proved so futile, however, 
that the very people for whose benefit they were 
wrought, believed him an imposter and crucified 
him. His disciples who we are told also performed 
miracles were likewise persecuted and slain. The 
miracles were of no assistance in spreading the 
Christian faith. The alleged raising of Lazarus 
after he had been buried for four days, and the al- 



76 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

leged raising of many from their graves at the time 
of the crucifixion, had so Uttle influence with the 
Jews that in a few generations' time there were no 
Jewish Christians to be found. All of them had be- 
come apostate, had gone back to their original faith. 
If the many wonderful miracles that are mentioned 
in the Gospels had actually been wrought, they 
would undoubtedly have been sufficient to convert 
the whole Jewish world to Christianity for all time. 
For several generations the Christian converts in 
the Gentile world were very few in number and 
these very largely belonged to the lowest classes ot 
society. When Christianity began to spread among 
the Gentiles it was not because of the miracles al- 
leged to have been wrought in distant Palestine, but 
because of the great merit they found in the teach- 
ings and life of Jesus, and in the teachings and life 
of Paul. 

Several of the miracles as recorded in the Gospels 
themselves furnish strong evidence of their improba- 
bility. 

The changing of water into wine at the marriage 
feast in Cana of Galilee is so directly contrary to all 
that Jesus taught that it is unbelievable. The Gos- 
pels plainly imply that Jesus never performed a mir- 
acle except only where it supplied an urgent and 
worthy need or want. Simply to furnish additional 
pleasure to a company of feasters cannot have sup- 
plied a very urgent need. 

But the miracle is objectionable not only on the 
ground of utility, it is also objectionable on the 
ground of fitness. The feasters had already "drunk 



MIRACLES 77 

freely" when the additional wine was furnished by 
the alleged miracle. No evil has cursed mankind as 
much as the evil of intemperance. Jesus always 
strongly condemned intemperance and it is impos- 
sible for us to believe that he performed a miracle 
the direct purpose of which was to promote immod- 
eration in drinking. 

So objectionable is this miracle in all its aspects 
that ministers of the Gospel frequently claim that 
the wine furnished for the marriage feast was not 
wine, but grape juice. Even this does not do away 
with the objection on the ground of utility, but was 
it unfermented ? So long as it is unfermented it isn't 
wine, it is nothing more than grape juice. That it 
was fermented wine is necessarily implied from the 
remark said to have been made by the ruler of the 
feast. "Every man," he said, "setteth on first the 
good wine, and when men have drunk freely, then 
that which is worse, thou hast kept the good wine 
until now." It is well known that after those in- 
dulging feel somewhat the effects of wine, their sense 
of taste becomes dulled and they are then not as 
competent to judge good wine as they would have 
been before they drank any. This very evidently 
was what the ruler of the feast had in mind when he 
made the above quoted remark. His remark would 
have been void of all meaning, if the wine had been 
unfermented or simply grape juice. 

Wherever used in the Bible the word "wine" in- 
variably means fermented wine, as is evident from 
the following passages : 

"And he (Noah) drank of the wine and was 
drunken." — Genesis 9:21. 



78 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

"Wine cheereth God and man." — Judges, 9:13. 

"Wine maketh glad the heart of man." — Psalms, 
104:15. 

"Wine is treacherous." — Habakkuk 2 :5. 

"Wine causeth redness of eyes." — Proverbs 23 :29. 

"Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess." — St. 
Paul in Ephesians 5 :18. 

In not a single passage in the Bible is the word 
wine used where it plainly means wine that is un- 
fermented. When grape juice is meant, it so ex- 
pressly states, as in Numbers 6 :3. 

There were certain religious sects among the 
Jews, such as the Rechabites (Jeremiah 35 :6-10, 
Numbers 6:2-4, Judges 13:14) and the Nazarites, 
who were not only total abstainers, but they would 
not even set out vineyards or eat grapes because of 
the evils so often resulting from the use of products 
of the grape, and yet Jesus we are told furnished 
wine for f casters by a miracle. We cannot believe 
it. The New Testament miracles must stand or fall 
together. If this one falls, the others should fall 
with it. 

The raising of Lazarus from the grave, after he 
had been dead four days, is the greatest of all the 
miracles Jesus is alleged to have wrought, and yet 
no mention is made of it save in the Gospel of St. 
John. Isn't it very strange that the other gospels do 
not even allude to it? That the Gospels of Matthew, 
Mark and Luke make no mention of it because it was 
already mentioned in St. John's Gospel cannot be 
correct, for it is conceded by all that the first three 
gospels were written before St. John's Gospel was 



MIRACLES 79 

written. Some apologists claim that the first three 
gospels make no mention of it because the history 
of it was still in the mouth of everybody so that a 
written record of it would have been superfluous, but 
the same thing can be said of all other miracles that 
they do record. 

This miracle, we are told in St. John's Gospel 
(John 11:45-53) was the direct cause of the caUing 
of a council of the chief priests and Pharisees at 
which the death of Jesus was determined upon, re- 
sulting soon afterward in his crucifixion. It is be- 
cause of its important consequences that makes the 
silence of Matthew, Mark and Luke still more inex- 
plicable. 

The only reasonable conclusion we can come to is 
that the writers of the first three gospels did not 
know of this most marvelous of all miracles, or they 
surely would have recorded it. If they did not know 
of it, it could not have occurred. It arose at a later 
period and had its origin in tradition. 

We would naturally think that the working of so 
great a miracle ought to have convinced every living 
Jew, including the high priests and Pharisees, of the 
Divine mission of Jesus so that they could not help 
but believe in him. But the effect produced, we 
are told, was just the contrary. The miracle created 
such a bitter enmity against Jesus that "from that 
day forth they took counsel that they might put 
him to death and that because of it Jesus "walked 
no more openly among the Jews but departed thence 
into the country near to the wilderness." (John 11 : 
53, 54.) 

John's Gospel states that when Jesus was first 



80 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

told of the sickness of Lazarus, he said : "This sick- 
ness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that 
the Son of God may be glorified thereby." He must 
have approached Lazarus and his sister's home with 
much inward joy and peace of mind because of the 
opportunity the raising of Lazarus would give him 
to manifest the glory of God and his own power, 
besides the great joy it would bring to the two sis- 
ters, Martha and Mary. And yet we are told that 
when he met Martha and Mary "He groaned in the 
spirit and was troubled" and that he wept. Jesus 
could not have been guilty of this implied charge of 
duplicity. For this additional reason we can place 
no belief in the miracle.^ 

In the first three gospels the most frequent objects 
of the curative power of Jesus are the demoniacs or 
those possessed of devils. It is remarkable that not 
a single cure of demoniacs is mentioned in the fourth 
gospel. Either the writer of this gospel did not be- 
lieve in them or he purposely omitted making men- 
tion of them because they were not believed in by 
the people for whose benefit the gospel was written, 
or it may be because this gospel was written at a 
late period when belief in them was already largely 
discredited. 

Demons, according to the belief of the Jews, were 
the disembodied souls of wicked men of past ages, 
including the souls of those who perished in the 



*The account of raising Lazarus from the dead may have been intended 
by its author as a purely symbolical story, the same as is the parable of 
Lazarus and Abraham. The two accounts are strikingly connected, not 
only because the name Lazarus occurs in both, but because of the note" 
worthy ending of the Lazarus and Abraham parable, namely: "And He 
said unto him, if they hear not Moses and the proptiets, neither will 
they be persuaded if ont rise from the dead." 



MIRACLES 81 

Deluge and of those who participated in building 
the Tower of Babel. Being disembodied, the de- 
mons were believed to be continually roaming 
around seeking to find a habitation in some living 
human body whose will was weaker than their own 
and whom they could consequently dominate. After 
once finding lodgment within a person, the demon 
was believed to have taken such entire possession as 
to speak through his or her organs — Matt. 8:31 — 
and to put his or her limbs in motion at pleasure — 
Mark 9:20. They were believed to be possessed of 
superior or supernatural power. As in the case of 
the Gerasene, it was possible for some persons to be 
possesed of a large number of devils. 

The Jews acquired the doctrine of demons from 
the Persians, who believed in two gods, one good 
and the other evil. Good and evil spirits were sup- 
posed to be everywhere present. Satan and his great 
host of inferior demons, by sufferance of Jehovah, 
were believed to be largely dominating the world. 

For various reasons the belief in demoniacal pos- 
session was very prevalent in the time of Jesus. The 
Jews were a highly imaginative people. They were 
grievously oppressed not only by reason of the 
Roman yoke but also because of the extensive sys- 
tem of graft that had sprung up among their own 
people in connection with the levying of the heavy 
taxes and in connection with the ceremonial rites 
and exactions at the Temple. The hot climate of 
Palestine tended to promote cases of hysteria. Many 
of their people were in continual fear and alarm lest 
a demon might take possession of them. The op- 
pression, worry and excitement under which they 



82 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

constantly labored tended to unbalance many of the 
weaker minds and influenced them to believe, and 
caused others to believe, that they wrere possessed 
of a demon. 

We now^ knov^ that all cases of demoniacal posses- 
sion were nothing more than mental maladies and 
nervous disorders. But so mistaken a conception 
did the Jews have of them that many of the com- 
mon ailments and diseases were by them regarded 
as cases of demoniacal possession. Several such are 
mentioned in the gospels. In Matthew 17:15 a man 
suffering from epilepsy is believed to owe his inflic- 
tion to his being possessed by a demon. In Mat- 
thew 9:32, a man who is dumb is supposed to be so 
because of his being possessed of a demon. In Mat- 
thew 12:22, there is the same mistaken belief with 
regard to a man who is both dumb and blind. In 
Mark 5:1a lunatic is supposed to be possessed, and 
in Luke 13:11-16 mention is make of a woman suf- 
fering from gouty contraction of body who^ is sup- 
posed to have come by her infliction because Satan 
had "bound her" for 20 years. The fact that the 
Jews had a mistaken conception as to the cause oi 
many common diseases, such as those just cited, 
fully confirms our belief that all cases of demoniacal 
possesion were purely imaginary and the result oi 
Jewish superstition. 

According to the first three gospels, much the 
larger portion of the cures Jesus effected were of 
persons possessed of demons. In both Mark and 
Luke's gospels the first cure Jesus wrought was the 
healing of "a man that had a spirit of an unclean 
demon." "They brought unto him many possessed 



MIRACLES 83 

with demons and he cast out the spirits with a 
word/' says Matthew. "And he called unto him his 
twelve disciples and gave them authority over un- 
clean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all man- 
ner of diseases and all manner of sickness," again 
says Matthew. It is significant that Peter in a dis- 
course at Caesarea after the crucifixion sums up the 
whole activity of Jesus in these words : "'Even Jesus 
of Nazareth, how God anointed him with the Holy 
Spirit and with power, who went about doing good 
and healing all that were oppressed of the devil ; for 
God was with him." (Acts 10:38.) 

It cannot be doubted that Jesus had wonderful 
success in curing persons supposed to be possessed 
of demons. He and his disciples, however, were not 
the only ones who efifected cures of this kind. The 
gospels themselves speak of others who efifected 
similar cures. (Matt. 7:22, Mark 9:38-40, Luke 9: 
49, 50.) There were many healers in those days who 
delivered or attempted to deliver from the possession 
or influence of unclean spirits and who met with 
varying success. A person with a commanding pres- 
ence and a strong mind can exert a wonderful influ- 
ence over another not so strong and whose mind has 
been weakened by epilepsy and other forms of hys- 
teria then so prevalent among the Jews. While fol- 
lowing their profession of driving out evil sprits, the 
exorcists used much ceremony consisting of myste- 
rious gestures and oft-repeated incantations. Jesus 
used no mystical words or formulas. He simply 
spoke with authority, commanding the evil spirit to 
leave the person diseased. With his majestic pres- 
ence and personality he must have had great power 



84 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

over weak and distracted persons. Combining, as he 
did, commanding authority with extreme gentleness 
and sympathy, he must have exerted a healing force 
that in his time was not equaled. But that by mir- 
acle he should have cured diseases with which he 
was entirely mistaken as to their nature, or that he 
should have driven imaginary devils out of persons 
by supernatural power, is inconceivable. 

It appears very plainly in the gospels that Jesus 
made no claim to performing miracles. Whenever 
he was asked for a sign^ or miracle, he invariably 
refused to comply with the request. In Matthew 
12 :38-40 we read : "Then certain of the Scribes and 
Pharisees answered him saying. Teacher we would 
see a sign from thee. But he answered and said 
unto them, an evil and adulterous generation seek- 
eth after a sign ; and there shall be no sign given to 
it but the sign of Jonah the prophet, for as Jonah 
was three days and three nights in the belly of the 
whale, so shall the Son of Man be three days and 
three nights in the heart of the earth." 

At another time the Jews asked him, "What sign 
showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these 
things?" He showed no sign 'or wrought no miracle 
for them, but replied : "Destroy this temple and in 
three days I will raise it up." It is stated that after 
his death his disciples then realized that he spoke 
not of the temple in Jerusalem, as was supposed by 
his hearers, but that "He spake of the temple of his 
body." 



^The word for sign in the original Greek gospel is SEMEION, the 
literal meaning of which is miracle, which shows or proves the power 
of him who work it. If it were less than a miracle, it would show no 
divine power. 



MIRACLES 85 

At still another time, "the Pharisees came forth 
and began to question with him, seeking of him a 
sign of heaven, trying him. And he sighed deeply 
in his spirit and saith, Why does this generation 
seek a sign? Verily I say unto you there shall be 
no sign given to this generation." — Mark 8:11, 12. 

He thus spurned every suggestion that he should 
work miracles and always sharply rebuked such a 
desire as betaking of a perverse spirit. When he 
said with emphasis, "there shall be no sign given to 
this generation," He must surely have meant what 
he said. It is not possible that he should have said 
this one day and broken it the next. 

We have every reason to believe that the gospels 
were written by men pious and truthful, who sin- 
cerely believed in the truth of every word that they 
wrote. And yet here we have a plain discrepancy. 
If Jesus positively refused to do miracles, he cer- 
tainly could not have wrought any. How then did 
the alleged miracles come to be inserted in the gos- 
pels ? 

Jesus undoubtedly effected many wonderful cures 
in such persons who in that age were deemed to be 
possessed of devils, by reason of his remarkable per- 
sonality, his power over weaker minds, and of his 
great sympathy and tenderness. His was a life of 
service and he was continually seeking to lessen the 
burdens of those oppressed in mind or body. After 
his death his wonderful cures naturally were mag- 
nified and in time became much more wonderful. 
We all know that the tendency of tradition is greatly 
to exaggerate. In that superstitious age, and cen- 



86 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

turies before the time of newspapers and of printed 
books, it could not have taken many years for the 
common belief to prevail in Palestine that Jesus had 
w^rought many miracles. This belief more readily 
gained credence, too, because Jesus was regarded as 
a prophet and all the prophets of old were believed 
to have performed miracles. 

It is a fact that the first gospel that was written 
gave simply the teachings of Jesus and gave very 
few, if any, of the incidents of his life. As his teach- 
ings spread and as time elapsed the Christian con- 
verts became desirous of, learning more about his 
life. In the meanwhile the disciples and all other 
eyewitnesses of what Jesus had said or done passed 
away and a new generation had appeared, even the 
second generation passed away and a third appeared. 
The miracles as we now have them in the New Tes- 
tament were handed down thru traditional sources 
a length of time sufficient to have all of the Christian 
converts sincerely to believe that they had actually 
been wrought. We have reason to believe that the 
miracles — one after another as they gained full cre- 
dence with the Christians — ^^came to be inserted in 
the gospel manuscripts, originally as marginal notes, 
and that they subsequently were embodied in the 
text of the manuscripts. The reasons for this belief 
we will now give in detail. 

So far as we know, Jesus himself left no written 
records, nor were any made by his direction. His 
disciples and the early Christian converts believed 
the end of the world to be quite near (I. Peter 4:7; 
I. John 2:18; James 5:8-9; Matt. 24:34; Mark 13:30; 



MIRACLES 87 

Matt. 16:28; Luke 21 :32) ; and thus for a long time 
they saw no need of preserving in writing the life 
and teachings of Jesus. 

The first written records that were made pertain- 
ing to the Christian faith were the several Epistles 
of Paul. His Epistle to the Thessal.onians, believed 
to be his first, was written about 18 years after 
Jesus' death and his last Epistle was written shortly 
before his own death in 63 A. D. From Paul's writ- 
ings we gather several noteworthy facts. All of them 
are in the form of letters — Epistles — written not for 
the purpose of preserving and perpetuating the new 
faith, for he, too, beheved the end of the world was 
near (L Thess. 4:14-18; Romans 13:11, 12; I. Cor. 
7:29; Philippians 4:5), but simply with the view of 
instructing and encouraging the members of distant 
churches that he had established, whom he at the 
time could not well reach personally. Very rarely, 
if at all, does Paul in any of his Epistles give or 
quote any words or teachings of Jesus. In none of 
his Epistles does he allude to any of the four gos- 
pels of the New Testament, for the undoubted reason 
that they had not yet appeared or had not yet been 
written. Paul does not make mention of a single 
miracle that either Jesus or he himself should have 
wrought. Another noteworthy fact is that the sev- 
eral Epistles of Peter, of John and of James — written 
statements direct from those who would have been 
eyewitnesses — do not make mention of a single mira- 
cle that Jesus is alleged to have wrought. 

All that we know of the early history of the four 
gospels, outside of what the New Testament fur- 
nishes, is what we gather from the writings, such as 



88 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

have been preserved, of the early fathers of the 
church. Papias, a bishop of the church in Asia Minor 
who wrote in about 120 A. D., is the very first of the 
early church fathers who makes reference to the 
writings of Matthew and of Mark. He states that 
Matthew made a written record of the sayings and 
teachings of Jesus — "The Lord's Oracle," he calls 
them — in the Aramic language, which was then the 
common language spoken in Judea. It is evident 
from what Papias writes that the Gospel according 
to Matthew originally contained only a collection of 
the words of Jesus and gave no incidents of his life, 
nor of his miracles. Papias also states that Mark 
had not seen or heard Jesus, but had been a follower 
of Peter and that after Peter's death Mark reduced 
to writing all that he remembered of what Peter 
spoke of the things said and done by Christ. He 
dwells on the defects of "order" or arrangement in 
Mark, who, he says, never even contemplated an 
orderly treatise. Papias makes no mention either of 
Luke's or John's gospels. 

Justin Martyr, who wrote in about the year 140 
A. D., refers in his writings to the "Oracles" re- 
corded by Matthew and to the "Notes" made by 
Mark, and he also at times makes mention of "The 
Memoirs of the apostles and their followers," stating 
that the memoirs were read with the books of the 
prophets in the service of the church. By the term 
"apostles" he evidently refers to Matthew and John 
and by the term "their followers" to Mark and Luke. 
It is noteworthy that when Justin Martyr refers in 
his writings to what we now know as gospels, he 
names them as notes or memoirs. 



MIRACLES 89 

Polycarp, Clement of Rome and Ignatius, the early 
fathers of the church prior to the time of Papias and 
Justin Martyr, in their writings frequently quote 
sayings and teachings of Jesus, but it is difficult to 
determine whether they quote them from written 
records or as received thru oral tradition. They 
make no direct mention of either of the four gos- 
pels. Some of their quotations as "words of the 
Lord" are not found in any of our gospels. Even 
the quotations that Papias and Justin Martyr make 
from the "Oracles of Matthew" are not always ac- 
curate, showing that Matthew's manuscript must 
from time to time have undergone slight changes, no 
doubt when copies of it were being made. Later on, 
when the fathers of the church do begin to quote 
from our four gospels, mentioning them by name, 
they also frequently quote from other writings now 
called apocryphal or uncanonical. None of them 
were deemed sacred or inspired until toward the 
close of the second century, or 150 years after the 
death of Jesus. 

The early Christians, most of them, belonged to 
the lower classes of society, to the poor and unedu- 
cated, and for many years very few converts were 
made among those of wealth, intelligence and influ- 
ence. They were often viewed with distrust and were 
in a large measure despised by their neighbors. As 
they increased in number they began to be perse- 
cuted by those in authority and they were obliged 
to meet for worship in secret places. For a long time 
the new faith was propagated among them solely by 
word of mouth. After the lapse of 30 or more years 



90 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

when the Teachings or Oracles of Jesus by Matthew 
and the manuscripts of Mark and of Luke first ap- 
peared, they were obliged to keep the manuscripts 
hidden and very few had access to them. Many of 
the converts could not have read them, even if they 
had access to them. So that for many years, even 
after the gospel manuscripts appeared, the Chris- 
tians had to depend for what they learned of the 
Christian faith not so much on written documents as 
on oral teachings and oral traditions. 

What was received by the early Christians thru 
oral tradition was by them deemed fully as reliable 
as what was contained in their gospel manuscripts. 
Even Paul, the first to reduce to writing the tenets 
of the new faith, says : '*So then, brethren, stand 
fast and hold the traditions which ye were taught." 
There were those among the early fathers of the 
church who believed that what was obtained thru 
tradition was even more reliable than what was ob- 
tained from the manuscripts. Papias, the bishop 
in Asia Minor, already referred to, in his work en- 
titled "Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord," 
writes : "For I imagined that what was to be gotten 
from written manuscripts was not so profitable to us 
as what came from the living and abiding voice," and 
again he says : "He could gain more reliable knowl- 
edge from the living voice of tradition than he could 
from the manuscripts." 

Not only were the original Gospel manuscripts 
kept in hidden places and were read by few, but they 
were not very durable. After being used for a time, 
they had to be rewritten. According to the custom 



MIRACLES 91 

of that time they were written with pen and ink on 
a frail paper made of papyrus. Uncial or large capi- 
tal letters were used thruout. The words ran one 
into the other, with no division between them, and 
no punctuation was used. The papyrus manuscripts 
were kept in rolls, which were unrolled while they 
were being read and again rolled at the other end. 
Frequent rolling tended to break them and to punc- 
ture them with holes. If they became at all wet or 
damp, this tended to deface the writing. They were 
therefore not very durable and often had to be copied 
on new papyrus rolls in order to preserve the con- 
tents. Copies, too, were occasionally made to be 
sent to distant churches. 

We learn from the writings of the fathers of the 
church that corrections or slight changes were some- 
times made in the Gospel manuscripts. Corrections 
were occasionally made in order to remove diffi- 
culties ; changes were sometimes made in the text so 
that it would more conform with other texts or with 
accepted beliefs, and the citations from the Old Tes- 
tament were sometimes made more exact or more 
complete. We learn furthermore that additions were 
occasionally made to the Gospel texts, additions 
that were taken from parallel narratives in other 
texts, and additions that were of traditional source 
which had been orally handed down for so long 
a time that they had become commonly accepted 
beliefs. 

The corrections and slight changes were usually 
made or inserted between the lines of the text, and 
the additions were usually written on the margins of 



92 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

the text. It was by means of these marginal notes, 
or glosses as they were called, that much new ma- 
terial was being gradually added to the original text. 
"Whenever a subsequent copy of the gospel manu- 
script was made, these insertions and marginal notes 
were not usually copied as such, but they were em- 
bodied in and made part of the text. 

All this was done in perfect good faith. No delib- 
erate falsification of the text was at all practiced. 
The sole aim of the scribes and copyists was to get 
from reliable sources, as they thought, all that Jesus 
had said and all that he had done. Inasmuch as no 
writings were yet deemed sacred or inspired, they 
felt justified in making corrections and additions in 
order to get at the true Gospel story. 

There is apparently much reason for the peculiar 
phraseology that was used in framing the titles to 
the Gospels, namely : The Gospel according to Mat- 
thew, the Gospel according to Mark, etc. Matthew, 
Mark and Luke were probably originally named as 
the direct authors of their respective Gospels, but be- 
cause of the many corrections and additions that had 
slowly and gradually crept into the three several 
texts, the scribes, copyists and the early officials of 
the church no longer felt themselves justified in at- 
tributing to Matthew, Mark and Luke the direct 
authorsihp of their several writings, so they gave to 
the Gospels the titles as we now have them. John's 
Gospel was written at a much later date and con- 
fines itself mostly to the teachings, so that the 
changes and additions made to its text were com- 
paratively few. 



MIRACLES 93 

The exact time cannot be determined when the 
Gospels and the other books of the New Testament 
were canonized and placed on a level with the books 
of the Old Testament, but this did not occur until at 
least 130 years after the death of Jesus. During 
these 130 years there appeared a large number of 
writings pertaining to the Christian faith in the 
shape of Gospel narratives, epistles, homilies, proph- 
ecies, apostolic histories and apocalyptic visions/ 
Many of them were for a long time deemed fully as 
genuine by the primitive fathers of the church as 
were the books of the present canon. During the 
second century a number of heretical sects sprang 
up, the Gnostics, Marcionites and others, who 
severely disputed and denied certain important doc- 
trines of the church, and then for the first time was 
clearly felt the absolute necessity of forming a strict 
list of really authoritative writings. It was shortly 
after 160 A. D., or during the second half of the 
second century, that we for the first time find that a 
canon of Scripture had been established, a canon of 
Scripture deemed holy and inspired. Irenaeus, Bishop 
of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, 
theological writers, each at about the same time rec- 
ognize the existence of the canon, but how or where 
it was established is not known. It was at about the 



^These are the names of several of them: The Shepherd of Hermas, 
Epistle of Barnabas, Gospel according to the Hebrews, Gospel of the 
Egyptians, Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Peter, Epistle of Clement, Acts 
of Paul, Revelation of Peter, Teachings of the Apostles, Preaching of 
Peter. Traditions of Matthew, Acts of Andrew and Acts of John. 

Gospel of Thomas states that Jesus in a fit of ill temper, when a 
youth, struck a companion with death and then when he was remonstrat- 
ed with, he cursed his accusers with blindness. 

Traditions of Matthew states that Jesus carried water in his mantle 
when his pitcher was broken, and that he made birds of clay while play- 
ing on the Sabbath and that when he was accused of naughtiness, he 
caused them to fly. 



94 VITAL TO OUR,':^ELIGION 

same time that a Catholic Church was instituted, so 
that the formation of a Cathohc Church and a canon 
were virtually simultaneous. 

Irenaeus includes 'the Shepherd of Hermas in the 
canon of Scripture, but ignores several of the Epis- 
tles. Clement of Alexandria includes the Shepherd 
of Hermas, speaks of it as divine, and also includes 
in the canon the Epistle of Barnabas and the Epistle 
of Clement. Tertullian excludes several of the pres- 
ent Epistles and it is of peculiar significance that 
even at that late day he attaches as of equal impor- 
tance to the canon the traditions orally transmitted 
in such churches as had been taught by the apostles. 
These three fathers did not fix the canon absolutely. 
Its limits were still unsettled. But they sanctioned 
most of the books now accepted as divine. 

In writing of the four Gospels of the New Testa- 
ment, Irenaeus states that they are the four pillars 
on which the foundation of the church is built, and 
that there are just four in number, no more, no less. 
He compares them with the four general winds, the 
four directions of the earth, the four faces of the 
cherubim, and with the four general covenants given 
to humanity, namely, that with Noah, with the sign 
of the rainbow ; Abraham's, with the sign of circum- 
cision ; the giving of the law to Moses ; and the Gos- 
pel thru our Lord Jesus Christ. Irenaeus berates 
those who bring forth more or fewer Gospels. 

Origen, a distinguished theologian who wrote 
about 250 A. D., divides the Christian books into 
three classes : First, those generally received as 
canonical ; second, those controverted or doubtful, 
in which he included the Epistle of Barnabas, Gospel 



MIRACLES 95 

according to the Hebrews, Gospel of the Egyptians, 
the Acts of Paul ; third, the heretical, under which 
he included the Epistles of James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 
John. As to those he classes as doubtful he appeals 
to the tradition of the church for a decision as to 
whether or not they belong to the canon. 

After the four present Gospels were selected, in 
exclusion of all other Gospels, as authoritative and 
canonical, Origen, Theophilus and others made care- 
ful comparison of the several texts of the first three 
Gospels, or the synoptics, with the view of har- 
monizing their contents and completely to smooth 
them into uniformity. 

Eusebius of Caesarea, known as the father of ec- 
clesiastical history, in about the year 332 A. D. was 
entrusted by Constantine, the emperor of Rome, 
with the commission to make out a complete collec- 
tion of the sacred Christian writings for the use of 
the Catholic church. Eusebius followed ecclesias- 
tical tradition and divided the Christian writings, 
the same as did Origen, into the three classes of 
canonical, doubtful and heretical. 

The Council of Laodicea, held in 363 A. D., vir- 
tually decided the canon for the Greek or Eastern 
branch of the Christian church. It included all of 
the present books of the New Testament with the 
exception of the last, the Book of Revelation. The 
canon of the Roman Catholic church was not finally 
determined until at the Council of Trent, held in 1546 
A. D. Martin Luther was of the opinion that Paul's 
Epistle to the Hebrews was not authentic, the Reve- 
lation of John he considered neither apostolic nor 
prophetic, and the Epistle of James he pronounced 



96 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

unapostolic and a book of straw. It is a matter of 
dispute among theologians even to this day whether 
several of the books now included in the New Testa- 
ment ought not to be excluded as being uncanonical. 
The books considered doubtful are Paul's Epistle to 
the Hebrews, 2 Peter, James, Jude and Revelation. 

When we consider therefore how the Gospels of 
the New Testament came to be written; that their 
formation was a very gradual process extending over 
a period more than a century in length, we can read- 
ily understand how easy it was for the miracles to be 
inserted subsequent to the time when the Gospel 
writings were first started. The first three Gospels 
originally must have been very brief. Matthew's 
Gospel, when first written, contained only the teach- 
ings of Jesus. Mark ''wrote from memory." All 
that Mark and Luke wrote the fathers of the church 
termed mere "Notes" or "Memoirs." When Chris- 
tianity began to spread thru the Gentile world the 
new converts naturally were desirous of learning 
more of the life history of the founder of their re- 
ligion. Jesus had lived in comparative obscurity 
during the greater portion of his life and this made 
it difficult to learn much about him. What added 
to the difficulty was that in the meanwhile the city 
of Jerusalem with its temple was destroyed and such 
of its inhabitants who had not been slain were widely 
dispersed. The Christian converts were obliged to 
depend on oral tradition for nearly all that the}^ 
learned of his life. What they learned from tradi- 
tional sources they deemed fully as reliable as what 
they learned from their meagre manuscripts, in fact 



MIRACLES 97 

more so. Anything that was handed down thru oral 
tradition came from many mouths, there usually 
would be many sponsors to vouch for its truthful- 
ness, while as to anything that was contained in a 
manuscript — a fragile and perishable papyrus roll — 
there was no accredited sponsor for it save its au- 
thor. For a long time the written rolls had to be 
kept in hiding and were accessible to but few per- 
sons. The condition of things and the character of 
the original Gospel manuscripts were such that it 
need not be wondered at that Paul wrote "Hold 
fast to your traditions"; that Bishop Papias stated 
that he could gain more reliable knowledge from tra- 
dition than he could from the written records, or 
that Justin Martyr wrote that "Oral tradition was 
the chief fountain of Christian knowledge." 

We must remember that Christianity had its rise 
in an age of superstition. The Jews naturally be- 
lieved in miracles because of their peculiar concep- 
tion of Jehovah. They regarded him as their tribal 
god, their god only. Like all other tribal gods, Je- 
hovah was believed directly and frequently to 
intervene in human affairs for the benefit of his own 
particular people. Jesus was regarded as a prophet 
and the prophets of old were believed to have 
wrought all kinds of wonders. Elisha in particular 
was credited with many miracles. One time while 
on his way to Bethel he was followed by a lot of 
boys who mocked and made sport of him. "He 
looked behind him and saw them and cursed them in 
the name of Jehovah and there came forth two she- 
bears out of the wood and tare forty-two lads of 
them." — 2 Kings 2:24. He supplied an abundance 



98 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

of water for Jehosophat's army in an arid desert and 
he restored the dead son of a Shunammite woman 
to life. Jesus and his disciples were not the only 
ones in their time whom the Jews believed to have 
performed miracles. Satan and his demons were 
believed to have the same power. The founders of 
other religions were believed by their adherents to 
have wrought miracles. Buddha was claimed to 
have produced earthquakes by stamping his foot on 
the ground, and one time while absorbed in deep 
meditation he lifted himself up in the air and won- 
drous flames of all colours radiated from his body. 
The gods of Rome and of Greece were credited with 
marvelous wonders. Aesculapius was believed to 
have restored at least ten dead persons to life. 
Among many other marvels by him wrought, Pytha- 
goras is said to have caused the flooded waters of a 
river to subside so that his disciples could safely 
cross. Apollonius of Capadocia, born shortly before 
the Christian era, was believed to have wrought 
many miracles. He knew all languages without 
having learned them, and at one time he astonished 
the magistrates of Rome by raising to life the dead 
body of a lady of noble birth. A magnificent temple 
was raised to him in Cappadocia and he was there 
worshipped as a god for centuries. And so we might 
go on and enumerate many more alleged miracles 
which for a time had multitudes of sincere believers. 
In that credulous and superstitious age when there 
was a common belief in miracles, not only among 
those adhering to the Christian religion, but among 
the adherents of every other religion, it naturally did 
not take many years after his death before tradition 



MIRACLES 99 

had credited Jesus with the miracles which are re- 
corded in the New Testament. They the more read- 
ily gained credence because of the undoubted fact 
that he had most wonderful power in healing certain 
diseases very numerous in his time, those believed 
to have been caused by demoniacal possession. 
Handed down by tradition from one generation to 
another, the miracles gradually came to be inserted 
in the Gospel manuscripts as marginal notes by 
those who sincerely believed in them. Subsequently, 
whenever copies were made of the manuscripts, as 
was the usual custom, the marginal notes were em- 
bodied in the text. 

It was not only the miracles that were subse- 
quently inserted in the Gospel manuscripts. They 
contain other material which very evidently was 
added to the texts in the same manner as were the 
miracles. For example : In Matthew 10 :5 we read 
that Jesus charges his disciples, *'Go not into any 
way of the Gentiles and enter not into any city of 
the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep ot 
the house of Israel." And in Matthew 15:24 Jesus 
says, "I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the 
house of Israel." While in Matthew 28:19 Jesus 
commands his disciples, "Go ye therefore and make 
disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy 
Ghost." And again in Mark 13 :10 he says, "and the 
Gospel must first be preached unto all the nations." 

Here is a plain variance. The first two quoted 
passages are likely correct for two reasons: First, 
Jesus confined his own labors to Israel alone. Sec- 



100 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

ond, if Jesus had actually commanded the apostles 
to make disciples of all the Gentile nations, it would 
be practically impossible to understand how the 
apostles could have withstood Paul so hotly on this 
very point. 

It is very evident therefore that the last two 
quoted passages must have been subsequently in- 
serted, the same as were the miracles. 

The miracles narrated in the New Testament must 
have been inserted subsequent to the time when the 
Gospels were first written, for the reason that in no 
instance do they make the least impression on other 
events which immediately follow them as told in the 
Gospel texts. Subsequent events are related as tho 
no miracle had just been wrought, as tho they had 
in no Avay exerted any influence over the persons 
who are said to have witnessed them. 

In the seventh chapter of Luke we are told that 
Jesus in the presence of a large multitude restored to 
life the dead son of a widow in the city of Nain, 
while they were carrying him on a bier to his grave, 
and that the report thereof went forth "in the whole 
of Judea and all the region round about." Shortly 
afterward, for it is recorded in the very next chapter 
of Luke, Jesus is said to have restored to life the 
daughter of Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue. When 
he came to the house of Jairus he found them all 
weeping and he said, "Weep not, for she is not 
dead but sleepeth." And we are told that "they 
laughed him to scorn, knowing that she was dead." 
Had the miracle occurred at Nain as related, in place 
of laughing him to scorn they more likely would 



MIRACLES 101 

have said "He brought back to life the widow's son ; 
we believe he can also restore the life of Jairus' 
daughter." And again we are told, "the fame thereof 
went forth into all the land." 

Just before Jesus restored Lazarus to life after he 
had been dead four days, as narrated in John's Gos- 
pel, he told Martha, "thy brother shall rise again." 
It is very evident from her reply that Martha enter- 
tained no thought that he could or would restore 
Lazarus to life, for she says : "I know that he shall 
rise again in the resurrection at the last day." Some 
of the Jews that were present at the tomb said, 
"Could not this man who opened the eyes of him 
who was blind, have caused that this man also 
should not die?" Had the former miracles actually 
been wrought they would much more likely have 
said, "He restored the widow's son to life and he 
restored the daughter of Jairus to life; we believe 
he can also restore Lazarus to life." Every man and 
woman in Judea must have known of Jairus' daugh- 
ter and the widow's son being restored to life, if 
these miracles occurred, and yet of all that was 
said and done at the raising of Lazarus, as narrated 
in John's Gospel, it is very evident that neither 
the disciples, nor Martha and Mary, nor any of the 
Jews then present, could possibly have known of 
the former miracles. 

In all four of the Gospels we are told that Jesus 
at one time fed 5,000 men, not counting the women 
and children, with only 5 barley loaves and 2 fishes 
and that after the feeding there were enough broken 
fragments of bread left to fill 12 baskets. According 
to the sixth chapter of John this same multitude on 



102 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

the very next day ask Jesus these questions : **What 
then doest thou for a sign, that we may see and be- 
lieve thee? What v^orkest thou? Our fathers ate 
the manna in the wilderness; as it is written. He 
gave them bread out of heaven to eat." Had Jesus 
actually wrought the miracle of feeding the 5,000 
the day previous, no such questions would have been 
asked him, conclusively showing that the miracle 
must have been inserted in the text at some sub- 
sequent time. 

According to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, 
Jesus soon afterward fed another multiture, this 
time there being 4,000 people, whom he fed with 7 
loaves and a few small fish. On this second occasion 
after Jesus expressed a desire to furnish the people 
with food, his disciples ask, "Whence shall one be 
able to fill these men with bread here in a desert 
place?" That his disciples in so short a time should 
have totally forgotten the former feeding of the mul- 
titude and doubted Jesus' power is almost inconceiv- 
able if the former miracle was actually wrought. 
Even shortly after the feeding of the 5,000 and again 
of the 4,000, according to Mark, the disciples had ap- 
parently forgotten both, when while on a voyage 
with Jesus they complained that they had no bread 
in the boat, only one loaf. 

Jesus performs in quick succession the most mar- 
velous of miracles, culminating in the raising of Laz- 
arus after he had been dead four days. Oughtn't it 
to have been enough to convert every soul in Judea? 
And yet the only effect it has upon the Jews is that 
their main governing body, the Sanhedrim, deter- 
mines to have Jesus put to death. At the time of the 



MIRACLES 103 

crucifixion, miracles still more marvelous, if possible, 
take place. All of a sudden in the middle of the day 
a complete darkness falls over the earth lasting for 
three hours. The veil of the temple is rent in two 
from the top to the bottom. The earth begins to 
quake, so that the rocks are rent and the tombs 
are opened. Many bodies of the saints are raised, 
and coming forth out of their tombs they appear 
unto many in Jerusalem. No one apparently is at all 
impressed with these stupendous occurrences save 
only the Roman centurion and a few of his soldiers 
present at the cross and they say, "Truly this was 
the Son of God." Soi little of an impression does it 
make on the Jews that their chief priests and the 
Pharisees appear before Pilate, saying, "Sir, we re 
member that that deceiver said, while he was yet 
alive, after three days I arise again, command there- 
fore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third 
day, lest haply his disciples come and steal him 
away and say unto the people, he is risen from the 
dead; and the last error will be worse than the 
first." 

So little of an impression do these marvelous oc- 
currences make that apparently no one is converted 
because of them, not even Paul, who kept on perse- 
cuting the Christians the same as before, and who 
was not converted until some time afterward. Paul 
makes no mention of them in any of his Epistles. 
No historian makes mention of them, not even the 
Jewish historians, Josephus and Philo. Josephus, 
who was 18 years of age at the time of the alleged oc- 
currences and who relates in minute detail every- 
thing that transpired under Pontius Pilate, does in 



104 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

no. way even allude to them. They could not have 
occurred. The only reasonable conclusion we can 
come to is that they had their origin subsequently 
in tradition ; that they were handed down from one 
generation to another until they were believed to 
have actually occurred and that as soon as an alleged 
miracle gained common belief it was inserted in one 
or more of the gospels, first as a marginal note and 
later embodied in the text. 

An apparently strong argument advanced in favor 
of the New Testament miracles is that they are to 
such an extent interwoven with the teachings of 
Jesus that they are well nigh inseparable. Many of 
the teachings, it is claimed, are drawn from or based 
on the cures wrought, so that if you reject the cures 
you must likewise reject the teachings. 

This is true only in one certain class of cures. If 
we examine the Gospel texts we will find that where 
the teachings of Jesus are interwoven with the won- 
derful cures he effects, it is almost without excep- 
tion in cases of persons supposed to be possessed 
of demons. There are at least seven such cases men- 
tioned in the Gospels, namely : A man with an un- 
clean spirit in the synagogue at Capernaum ; a dumb 
man possessed of a demon ; casting a demon out of 
an epileptic; a youth who had a dumb spirit; the 
woman who had a spirit of infirmity for 18 years ; 
one possessed of a demon, blind and dumb ; and the 
Canaanitish woman whose daughter is vexed with a 
demon. It is quite probable that all of these cures 
were wrought by Jesus. For reasons already stated, 
he wielded wonderful power in healing diseases of 



MIRACLES 105 

this kind, but it is inconceivable that miracles should 
have been performed to cure these diseases, the cause 
and nature of which were entirely mistaken by those 
who wrought the alleged miracles. Whatever there 
is of a miraculous nature, and there is but little, in 
the healing of these diseases, must subsequently 
have crept in thru traditional sources. 

The other healings credited in the Gospels to 
Jesus, wherein his teachings are directly drawn from 
the cures, are, if we mistake not, only three, namely : 
The cure of a man sick of the palsy, healing the man 
with a withered hand on a Sabbath, and healing a 
man with dropsy on a Sabbath. There is very little 
teaching connected with the first one, and the last 
two bear every evidence of having originally been 
parables, the purpose of which was to show that it 
was lawful to do good deeds on the Sabbath, in refu- 
tation of the Pharisees, who held that no work of 
any kind should be done on the Sabbath. All of the 
real miracles said to have been wrought are not con- 
nected with any teachings. The turning of water 
into wine, healing Peter's wife's mother of a fever, 
curing the lepers, curing the two blind men near 
Jericho, Jesus walking upon the waters, stilling the 
tempest of the sea, the feeding of the 5,000 and of 
the 4,000, driving a legion of demons out of the Gera- 
sene into a herd of 2,000 swine that rushed down into 
and perished in the sea, the transfiguration and the 
restoration of the lives of the widow's son, of Jairus* 
daughter and of Lazarus, not one of them has any 
connection with what follows in the text and each 
and all of them can be removed from the Gospels 
without at all interfering with the teachings. 



106 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

In the eleventh chapter of Matthew we are told 
that when John the Baptist, who was in prison, 
heard of the works of Jesus he sent his disciples to 
ask of Jesus, "Art thou he that cometh, or look we 
for another?" And this, we are told, was Jesus' an- 
swer: "Go and tell John the things which ye hear 
and see; the blind receive their sight, and the lame 
walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and 
the dead are raised up, and the poor have good 
tidings preached to them. And blessed is he whoso- 
ever shall find no occasion of stumbling in me." 

It is remarkable that this list should close with 
what is not a miracle at all. However, the last clause 
fits admirably if Jesus was speaking not of the phys- 
ically but the spiritually blind, lame, leprous, deaf 
and dead. Jesus was wont to speak metaphorically 
and in parables. That his answer to John was in- 
tended to be taken not literally but figuratively ap- 
pears very evident from the following metaphorical 
words of Isaiah, with whose writings we all know 
Jesus was familiar, namely : "Then the eyes of the 
blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall 
be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as a 
hart and the tongue of the dumb shall sing; for in 
the wilderness shall waters break out and streams 
in the desert." — Isaiah 35 :5, 6. And also in Isaiah 
61:1, "The spirit of the Lord Jehovah is upon me; 
because Jehovah has anointed me to preach good 
tidings unto the meek ; he hath sent me to bind up 
the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the cap- 
tives, and the opening of the prison to them that are 
bound." 



MIRACLES 107 

It is claimed that Paul fully believed in miracles. 
He no doubt did. He lived in a time when there was 
a general belief in them not only among his own 
people, but thruout the Gentile world. He was a 
Jew and undoubtedly had the same vague views 
regarding the natural and the supernatural as all of 
his race then had. But it is a singular fact that in 
all that he wrote he does not cite a single miracle 
that either he or Jesus should have wrought. That 
he himself possessed no supernatural power to heal 
the sick may plainly be inferred from several pas- 
sages in his Epistles. He was compelled at one time 
to modify his plans because of "an infirmity of the 
flesh," and on two occasions he was inconvenienced 
and suffered much anxiety on account of the sick- 
ness of his friends, Epaphroditus and Trophinus. If 
he really restored the life of Eutychus at Troas, 
as is claimed in the Acts of Apostles, would he not 
have cured Epaphroditus and Trophinus, who were 
simply ill and whose assistance meant so much to 
him in his good work? 

Soon after the crucifixion, according to the Acts 
of Apostles, both Paul and Peter on various occa- 
sions made addresses before crowds, consisting 
largely of unbelieving Jews, trying to convince them 
that Jesus was the Son of God. They summed up in 
a brief way the whole history of Israel and endeav- 
ored to prove that Jesus was the Messiah who fre- 
quently had been foretold by the prophets. It is very 
singular that in none of their addressees does either 
Peter or Paul cite the remarkable miracles that 
occurred before the crucifixion, the raising of Laza- 
rus, the supernatural darkness enveloping the earth, 



108 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

and the many who arose from their graves and ap- 
peared in Jerusalem. They could have cited nothing 
more convincing in their efforts to prove the divinity 
of Jesus. Indeed it would not have been necessary 
for Peter and Paul to prove the divinity of Jesus 
if these miracles had actually occurred. Every Jew 
would have been convinced of it. 

Another argument advanced in favor of the mira- 
cles are the alleged appearances of Jesus after his 
crucifixion, not only attested to in the four Gospels 
but also vouched for by Paul in his first Epistle to 
the Corinthians. 

While Paul was crossing the desert and on his 
way to Damascus, there suddenly shone round about 
him a great light from heaven. He fell upon the 
earth and heard a voice saying, ''Saul, Saul, why per- 
secutest thou me? It is hard for thee to kick against 
the goad." We are told that "he could not see for 
the glory of the light." He asked, "What shall I do, 
Lord," and the Lord said, "Arise and go into 
Damascus and there it shall be told thee of all things 
which are appointed for thee to do." Paul arose 
from the earth and when he opened his eyes he could 
not see, and they that were with him led him by the 
hand and brought him into Damascus. There are 
three separate accounts of this experience of Paul 
given in the Acts of Apostles, in chapters 9, 22 and 
26, and they do not in all respects agree. For ex- 
ample, in Acts 9:7 it is stated that those that were 
with Paul heard the voice from heaven, while in Acts 
22 :9 it is stated that they did not hear the voice, only 
Paul heard it. 



MIRACLES 109 

When Paul states that the risen Christ appeared 
to him while in the desert and that he heard his 
voice, he evidently does not mean an ordinary seeing 
and hearing with the physical senses, but an inward 
experience with his soul. He could not have actually 
seen Jesus, for it is expressly stated that ''he could 
not see for the glory of the light," and when it was 
all over with "his eyes were opened," plainly show- 
ing that what he saw and heard was an inward 
seeing and experience, or a vision. Paul intimates 
that it was not an ordinary seeing whenever he sub- 
sequently refers to it. In Galatians 1 :16 he says: 
"It pleased God to reveal his Son in me, that I 
might preach him among the Gentiles," evidently 
referring to his conversion while in the desert. In 2 
Corinthians 4:6 he says: "God shined in our hearts 
for the illumination of the knowledge of the glory 
of God in the face of Jesus Christ." And we have 
the statement of Paul, as reported in Acts 26 :19, that 
what he saw while on his way to Damascus was a 
heavenly vision. "Wherefore, oh King Agrippa, I 
was not disobedient to the heavenly vision," he says. 

It was not the only vision that Paul had. He had a 
number of them. "But I will come to visions and 
revelations of the Lord," he says in 2 Corinthians 
12:1. "And a vision appeared to Paul in the night," 
as stated in Acts 16:9. At another time, "For there 
stood by me this night an angel of the God whose I 
am, whom also I serve saying, Fear not, Paul, thou 
must stand before Caesar, and lo, God hath granted 
thee all them that sail with thee" — Acts 27 :23. Peter 
had a vision in the middle of the day, the same 
as had Paul, when he saw the heavens open and a 



no VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

great sheet let down wherein were four-footed 
beasts, insects and birds, as stated in Acts 10:10. 
The Book of Revelations is composed of visions that 
were seen by John. 

Paul evidently believed that the risen Jesus, the 
Triune God, would- not appear or speak to him or to 
any other man, save in visions. In speaking of God 
and the Lord Jesus Christ in I Timothy 6:16, he 
says : "Whom no man hath seen or can see." When- 
ever God is alleged to have appeared and spoken to 
the prophets, it was always in visions. Samuel in a 
vision is called by Jehovah to be a prophet — 1 Sam- 
uel 3. Jehovah spoke to the prophet Isaiah in visions 
— Isaiah 1 :1. "The heavens were opened and I saw 
visions of God" — Ezekiel 1 :1. The word of Jehovah 
came to the prophet Joel in visions. Daniel says : "I 
saw in my vision by night." The prophet Hosea 
says : 'T have multiplied visions" — Hosea 12, 10. 

Paul uses the same Greek word for the appearance 
to himself that he does for the appearances to 
Cephas, to James, and to the other disciples. So he 
evidently believed that the appearances of Jesus to 
the disciples were likewise visions. Paul's statement 
that Jesus also appeared to above 500 brethren at 
once is plainly an interpolation. This would have 
been by far the most remarkable of all the appear- 
ances, yet not one of the Gospels makes mention of 
it and nowhere else in the entire New Testament is 
this appearance even alluded to. No circumstance, 
time or place is mentioned in connection with it, and 
it bears all the earmarks of having been subsequently 
inserted. 



MIRACLES 111 

Up to the time of his conversion Paul had zeal- 
ously persecuted the Christians. He was present at 
the time Stephen was storied to death. The joyful 
courage of the martyr, his brave and forgiving words 
and his glorified countenance at the moment of his 
death must have made a deep impression on Paul. 
Shortly afterward he started out on his journey to 
Damascus. While on the way his conscience may 
have sorely troubled him because of his persecution 
of the Christians. The hot scorching sands of the 
desert may likewise have exerted an influence. All 
combined were a psychological preparation for the 
vision that appeared to him. No voice from heaven 
would have made use of such an expression as "It is 
hard for thee to kick against the goad." The goad 
was in his soul and sorely troubled his conscience, 
against which he had vainly sought to kick before his 
conversion. 

The appearances of Jesus to his disciples and 
others after the resurrection, as described in the final 
chapters of the Gospels, are full of contradictions 
and are therefore not trustworthy. The number of 
women who after the crucifixion visit the tomb is 
variously represented from a whole company to only 
one. In Matthew they witness the removal of the 
stone, in Luke they found the stone already removed 
when they arrive. The angel is outside of the tomb 
in Matthew, he is inside of the tomb in Mark, and 
there are two angels inside the tomb in Luke. Ac- 
cording to John, Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, 
"Touch me not for I am not yet ascended to the 
Father." According to Matthew, Mary Magdalene 
and the other Mary "came and took hold of his feet 



112 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

and worshipped him." Matthew says Jesus appeared 
to the disciples in Galilee only, Luke says he ap- 
peared to them in Jerusalem only, and John says he 
appeared to them in Jerusalem first and in Galilee 
later. According to Luke, the disciples are to wait 
for the Spirit, according to John, they received the 
Spirit immediately. According to Luke, Jesus as- 
cended to heaven the evening of the third day after 
the crucifixion, according to the Acts he ascended 
not till 40 days afterward. We must conclude that 
the appearances of Jesus after his death and the inci- 
dents connected therewith were inserted in the 
Gospels subsequently and were based on traditions 
which had circulated sufficiently long to gather di- 
vergent elements by the course of transmission. 

That the tomb of Jesus was found empty cannot 
be doubted. It is also clear that the disciples had not 
caused the removal of the body. Either the chief 
priests or the Roman soldiers secretly removed the 
body for reasons of their own, or it may be, too, that 
Joseph of Arimathaea or some other man whom 
Jesus had befriended, unbeknown to the disciples, 
secretly removed and buried the body. The disciples 
were charged by the Pharisees with having removed 
it. Knowing that they had not done so and calling 
to mind the words spoken by Jesus before his death, 
they became convinced of his resurrection. Labor- 
ing under much suppressed excitement, some if not 
all of the disciples believed they had seen Jesus in 
visions. They reported it to others. The reports 
became spread and were handed down to succeeding 
generations. Thru tradition the visions became 
transformed into actual appearances and were 



MIRACLES 113 

clothed with all the conflicting details as we now 
find them in the final chapters of the several Gospels. 

Paul in the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians says that 
when the last trumpet shall sound *Ve shall all be 
changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye," 
and that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom 
of God." In the final chapters of the Gospels we find 
a direct contradiction of Paul's teachings. Luke, for 
example, states that the risen Jesus stood in their 
midst; the disciples supposed they beheld a spirit; 
but Jesus said, "Why are ye troubled and where- 
fore do questionings arise in your hearts? See my 
hands and my feet that it is I myself, handle me and 
see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold 
me having"; he showed them his hands and feet; he 
asked them, "Have ye anything to eat?" and they 
gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and 
ate before them. In fact, the appearances of the 
risen Jesus, as described in the Gospels, are in them- 
selves contradictory. He is represented as eating 
and as being touched by the disciples as tho he were 
clothed in a corporeal body, and at the same time 
he is represented as suddenly appearing in their 
midst and again disappearing and ascending into 
heaven as tho he were clothed in a spiritual body. A 
body capable of making its way thru closed doors 
surely has ceased to be tangible and cannot be 
touched. 

The resurrection was and is an abiding fact. The 
disciples and the first Christians were fully con- 
vinced of the resurrection of Jesus the third day after 
his death, not because of his alleged appearances, but 
because it was in in accord with what they had 



114 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

always been taught. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 :4, 
"and that he was buried, and that he hath been 
raised on the third day according to the Scriptures," 
meaning the Old Testament, the only Scriptures 
they then had. The belief in the resurrection on the 
third day was based on such scriptural passages as 
are found in Hosea 6 :2, 2 Kings 20 :5 and Daniel 12 :2. 
It was the common belief among the Jews. The only 
sect among them who did not believe in the resur- 
rection were the Sadducees. According to both 
Mark and Matthew, Jesus had on at least five differ- 
ent occasions told his disciples that after his death 
he would arise again on the third day. It seems very- 
strange therefore that, as narrated in the Gospels, 
the disciples refused to believe in the resurrection of 
Jesus until thru the instrumentality of the alleged 
appearances it was forced upon them. The asserted 
unbelief on the part of the disciples plainly had its 
origin in tradition and the evident purpose of it was 
to make the alleged appearances seem still more 
marvelous. 



Jesus of Nazareth 



CHAPTER I. 



Jesus the Prophet. 

During his lifetime Jesus was regarded as a 
prophet. "A great prophet has arisen," was the 
general belief among his own people. The woman at 
the well in Samaria says to him, "Sir, I perceive that 
thou art a prophet." On his triumphal entry into 
Jerusalem he was proclaimed by the multitude as a 
prophet. The Pharisees, however, denied all claims 
of his being a prophet, one time declaring, ''Search 
and see that out of Galilee ariseth no prophet." But 
on a number of occasions did the multitudes ad- 
dressed by Jesus exclaim, "This is of a truth the 
prophet." After his crucifixion one of his disciples 
spoke of him as "Jesus the Nazarene, who was a 
prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all 
the people." 

It appears that Jesus regarded himself as a 
prophet. On one occasion he stated that the experi- 
ence of his own life was the universal experience of 
all prophets, namely, that "a prophet is not without 
honor save in his own country and in his own house." 
On another occasion he said to certain Pharisees, 
"Nevertheless I must go on my way today and to- 
morrow and the day following ; for it cannot be that 
a prophet perish out of Jerusalem" (Luke 13 :33) . So 
whatever doi^bt there is as to what else Tesus mav 



116 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

have been regarded, he considered himself a prophet 
and he was so regarded by his followers. 

Israel had its prophets almost from the very begin- 
ning of its recorded history. They were regarded as 
the spokesmen of Jehovah. They were the medium 
thru whom Jehovah communicated with his people. 
Sometimes he is the divinely appointed leader of his 
people, like Moses or King David, but usually he is 
merely the expounder and interpreter of Jehovah's 
will. They were originally called Seers (I Samuel 
9:9), and were believed to have supernatural power 
in ordinary secular affairs. Saul, we are told, while 
searching with his servant for the lost asses of his 
father, sought the Seer Samuel to have him tell them 
where the asses could be found. All other tribes had 
their seers as well as did Israel. After Samuel's 
time, however, Israel's prophets appear to have con- 
cerned themselves only with spiritual affairs, seeking 
to discover, expound and foretell the will of Jehovah. 
Their alleged communications from Jehovah they re- 
ceived in dreams. In whatever they say, they speak 
not in their own name, but in the nam.e of Jehovah. 
They usually were men of prominent individuality. 
They might arise from any quarter, from any class. 
They were not ordained as such. Female prophets 
are mentionel, such as Miriam, Deborah and Huldah. 
A number of them led hermit lives, others lived in 
bands or companies, and at times they were quite 
numerous. We are told in 1 Kings 22:6 that there 
were 400 of them in the time of King Ahab. 

Beginning with Amos, a new order of prophets 
arises in Israel. There now begins the succession of 
canonical prophets. They appear as authors and 



JESUS THE PROPHET 117 

their writings are preserved in the Old Testament. 
The old order of prophets, or those prior to the time 
of Amos, were optimistic and believed that no mat- 
ter much what else the Israelites did, so long as they 
worshipped no other Gods than Jehovah, He would 
cause them to be a great and prosperous people. Up 
to that time He was largely considered as a national 
God. Under Amos and his successors, or the new 
order of prophets, He becomes an absolutely right- 
eous God and He can be Israel's God only so far as 
Israel recognizes and follows the right and abstains 
from doing wrong. The new order of prophets be- 
come pessimistic, for they believe that their people 
are so steeped in sin that there is no hope for them. 
They predict their total downfall, which becomes 
true when virtually all of their people are carried off 
into captivity. They have faith, however, that Je- 
hovah will not utterly cast off His chosen people, but 
that, after sifting out the wicked. He would in the 
end save and restore the remnant to greater power 
and prosperity than they ever had. 

The main characteristic of the canonical prophets 
of the Old Testament is that they were social reform- 
ers. They were continually seeking the will of 
Jehovah and expounding it to their people with the 
purpose of making them realize how evil they had 
become and of inducing them to become a better and 
more righteous people. To prophesy future occur- 
rences was only an incidental power made use of by 
the prophets. Watching closely the trend of events 
and reasoning from cause to efifect, they usually were 
remarkably correct in fortelling future events, tho 
sometimes they proved to be mistaken. The great 



118 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

purpose of their prophesying was to warn their peo 
pie of what would surely happen to them unless they 
mended their evil ways and cut out all wrongdoing. 
Seldom, however, were they very popular with their 
people, and their warnings were but little heeded. 

Jesus, like the Old Testament prophets, was pre- 
eminently a reformer. He and John the Baptist 
appear to stand alone in their age who recognized 
and battled against the great evils existing among 
their people. The most religious class in the com- 
munity, the Scribes and the Pharisees, had totally 
perverted the Jewish religion. The priests having 
charge of the sacrificial worship at the Temple had 
become so extortionate in the charges exacted from 
the worshippers that the Holy Temple had virtually 
become a den of thieves and robbers. The Roman 
yoke upon the people, heavy as it was, was made still 
more oppressive by the corrupt practices of the Jew- 
ish publicans or tax-gatherers. The people them- 
selves had fallen to the depths of sin and degradation. 
John the Baptist was soon imprisoned and later 
beheaded, so Jesus was virtually left alone in his 
almost hopeless task of reform. 

Who were the Scribe and Pharisees? After the 
restoration of the Jews to their native land and the 
rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem, and after 
Nehemiah and Ezra had gathered all of the Jewish 
laws, we first hear or read of the Scribes. They 
made copies of the law and became students in the 
law. The synagogue was a development of the exile 
when there was no sacrifice and no temple. The 
Scribes took charge of the services in the synagogue, 
largely consisting of the reading, teaching and ex- 



JESUS THE PROPHET 119 

pounding of the laws. The Scribes constituted a 
class distinct from the priests, who had charge of the 
sacrifice and the ceremonial worship in the Temple. 

After the Greeks had subjugated Palestine many 
of the Jews began to imitate the more polished man- 
ners and customs of the Greeks. This introduc- 
tion of foreign manners and customs soon met \yith 
much opposition. The Scribes as a whole, while 
they did not favor this effort to Hellenize the Jews, 
acted much too indifferently about it to suit some 
of their number. So the order of Pharisees arose 
among the Scribes at this time. As the word "Phari- 
see" — separate — implies, they separated themselves 
from, and bitterty fought, all foreign innovations and 
customs. In later years, after these attempted in- 
novations had died out, there came to be but little 
difference between the Scribes and the Pharisees. 

As the Pharisees were a new order arising out of 
the Scribes, the Sadducees were a new order arising 
out of the priest-class. The Sadducees had been 
almost as active in favoring, as the Pharisees were in 
opposing, the introduction of Grecian manners and 
customs. Sadduceeism in the main was a general re- 
action against the extremes of Pharisaism. The 
civil rulers of the kingdom, as a rule, were Sad- 
ducees. Many of them were quite wealthy. They 
denied the resurrection of the body and the existence 
of angels. They also denied the authority of the oral 
tradition on which Pharisaic doctrine was largely 
founded. They were far less popular with the Jew- 
ish masses than were the Pharisees. 

Israel's code of laws, as contained in the Penta- 
teuch, being general in terms, cases continually 



120 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

arose to which the code was not directly applicable. 
To make the code in all cases applicable, it was nec- 
essary to supplement it with legal decisions, which 
soon became quite numerous and which in time 
became known as the oral or traditional law. These 
numerous supplemental laws and decisions in time 
came to be codified in what was known as the Mish- 
nah, and soon came to be considered as of equal 
authority with the Pentateuchal laws. The belief 
soon prevailed, too, that not all the laws of their fore- 
fathers had been included in the Pentateuch, but that 
a number of them had been transmitted or handed 
down orally, and these gave rise to religious rites and 
practices that had no authority save that of tradition. 
The Scribes and Pharisees insisted on the strict 
observance of a great mass of oral tradition which 
during the course of 400 years had accumulated as a 
supplement to the laws of the Pentateuch. They 
made godliness to consist in scrupulous regard for 
pious ceremonies. They laid the utmost stress on a 
minute external observance of many details, such as 
distinctions between clean and unclean food, the 
various washings of the hands and body needful to 
the ceremonial purity, the times and ways of fasting, 
a morbid strictness in the observance of the Sabbath, 
and the wearing of phringes and phylacteries. This 
period, just as Jesus enters upon the scene, has been 
aptly described as "the night of legalism." The 
Scribes and Pharisees had no real faith in the good- 
ness or grace of God. They regarded Him as a severe 
and exacting taskmaster, and were much afraid lest 
by the most minute departure from the bare letter of 
the law they would offend Him. They were so 



JESUS THE PROPHET 121 

scrupulous in the observance of the outward forms ot 
religion that they lost complete sight of its true in- 
ward spirit. 

Jesus had the utmost sympathy with the sinful and 
the wayward among the lower and middle classes of 
the Jews. With them he felt that there was hope for 
reform, but he could see no hope for reform in the 
ruling classes. In order to open the eyes of the peo- 
ple and make them realize how sadly perverted their 
religion had become thru the baneful influences of 
the Scribes and Pharisees, he felt it necessary to pro- 
nounce the severest condemnation upon the latter. 
"You honor God with your lips," he tells them, "but 
your worship is all in vain, as you teach not the pre- 
cepts of God but the precepts of men. Outwardly 
you appear righteous unto men, but inwardly you 
are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. You cleanse the 
outside of the cup and the platter, but within you are 
full of extortion and wickedness. You love the chief 
place at feasts, the chief seats in the synagogue, the 
salutations in the market places, and to be called of 
men, Rabbi. You are like unto whited sepulchres 
which outwardly appear beautiful, but inwardly are 
full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. Ye 
serpents, ye offspring of vipers, how shall ye escape 
the judgment of hell?" 

Jesus incurred the bitter enmity of the Scribes 
and Pharisees not alone because of his severe ar- 
raignment of them, but also because of his efforts to 
put an end to their corrupt rites and practices. He 
likewise incurred the enmity of the Sadducees and 
the ruling powers mainly because of his interfering 
with their practices of extortion in the Temple. All 



122 VITAL TO OUR RPILIGION 

of them conspired the taking of his life and they suc- 
ceeded in prevailing on the Roman authorities to 
have him put to death. 

After Jesus' time other prophets arose in Israel. 
In the 21st chapter of Acts mention is made of the 
prophet Agabus, also of the four daughters of the 
evangelist Philip, who are said to have prophesied. 
In Acts 15 :32 mention is made of the prophets Judas 
and Silas. 



CHAPTER 11. 



Jesus the Messiah. 

The original meaning of the word Messiah in He- 
brew was "anointed" or "anointed one." When a 
king or priest was invested with his office, it was a 
part of the Hebrew ceremony to anoint him with oil. 
We read in the Old Testament of the anointing of 
Saul when he became king of Israel. David was 
anointed when he was made king and so was Solo- 
mon. Their early kings were believed by the He- 
brews to have been selected for them by their god 
Jehovah. He was regarded as Jehoah's vice-regent 
on earth. The spirit of Jehovah rested on him. A 
sacred meaning in time came to be attached to the 
word Messiah. During their many years of foreign 
oppression the word Messiah came to be used by 
them to designate the future, and as they believed 
the promised, deliverer or saviour of their people. 

Their early sacred writings and traditions told 
them that Jehovah had promised the progenitors of 
their race that he would make them a great and pros- 
perous people. During the reigns of David and 
Solomon they did enjoy national prosperity. But, 
excepting these and a few more rare and brief inter- 
vals, they had been thruout their history a sorely 
afflicted people. They were slaves in a foreign land, 
they were wanderers for forty years in a barren wil- 
derness, for several generations they were at almost 
continuous war with neighboring tribes in Palestine, 
they were rent in twain by a civil war, again and 



124 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

again they were subdued by foreign powers and com- 
pelled to pay heavy tribute, their chief city and tem- 
ple were destroyed, they were torn from their homes 
and carried off captives, and they were exiles in 
Babylonia for 60 years. It wasn't long after their 
restoration to their native land when they again be- 
came a subject people. They were continuously kept 
under cruel and oppressive yokes of foreign powers 
up and well into the second century of the Christian 
era. During the reign of the Roman emperor Had- 
rian in the year 135 A. D., they came to an inglorious 
end as a nation. The city of Jerusalem was de- 
stroyed, 985 villages scattered thru Palestine were 
made desolate, and their inhabitants, such as were 
not slain, were made to suffer indignities and 
cruelties most barbarous and unhuman, thousands of 
their wives and daughters being ravished. They 
were dispersed and they have remained outcasts ever 
since, scattered all over the world. 

When we think of it, their history presents so sad 
a picture that it appears unbelievable that they 
should have been God's own chosen people and 
under His direct and provident guidance. It is a re- 
proach upon our God to believe that He should have 
chosen a particular people, should have promised to 
make them a great and prosperous nation, and then 
should have so signally failed in guiding them along 
righteous paths, failed in His alleged promises, and 
should have permitted them under the most revolt- 
ing circumstances to come to so disastrous an end. 

It is quite natural that the Jews should have been 
continually looking for a Messiah. You take a peo- 
ple who believe in a particular god as god of their 



JESUS THE MESSIAH 125 

people only, a people who believe they had been 
promised to be made a prosperous and powerful na- 
tion, and you would naturally expect that this people 
will be continually looking forward to a divine ful- 
fillment of that promise. At times more particularly 
when misfortune besets them and other nations op- 
press them, they will constantly be expecting a 
deliverer sent by their god who will set them free. 
This is exactly what the Jews did, so there is nothing 
at all strange in their continually looking for and ex- 
pecting for centuries the coming of a Messiah, or 
another David who would deliver them from all for- 
eign oppression. That the Old Testament therefore 
is full of all manner of prophecies concerning the 
coming and the nature of the Messiah is not at all 
remarkable. It would be remarkable if under the 
circumstances it were not so. 

Were the many prophecies in the Old Testament 
concerning the expected Messiah fulfilled in Jesus ot 
Nazareth? Did they turn out to be true prophecies? 
They surely ought to have, if the Old Testament 
writings were divinely inspired. However, not all 
of them could possibly have turned out to be true 
prophecies, for they are not consistent with one 
another. They give us decidedly varying conceptions 
of the expected Messiah. Some of the prophets set 
him forth as a victorious and triumphant conqueror 
who will grind the enemies of Israel under his feet. 
Others set him forth as a suffering Messiah who will 
bring salvation to Israel entirely thru peaceful 
means. Still others indicate that Jehovah himself 
will come down on earth, destroy their enemies and 
himself take up the government of the Jews. 



126 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

Varying as the Old Testament prophecies are, noi 
a single one of them gives us a true picture of Jesus 
as he is represented in the New Testament. Those 
that foretell or imply a mere temporal ruler of course 
cannot apply to Jesus. Even the few prophecies that 
speak of a suffering Messiah and of one who will 
bring salvation to the Jews and to the world thru 
peaceful means, came far from portraying the Jesus 
of the New Testament. In a few minor details they 
seem to have correctly foretold certain incidents hap- 
pening in his career. These we will take up in the 
next paragraph. The Gospel story of Jesus in its 
main essential features is entirely different from all 
that is said concerning the Messiah in the old Testa- 
ment. In no single prophecy can Jesus be said to 
have been present to the mental eye of the prophet 
making any prediction of the expected Messiah. 

Soon after Christianity had spread among the Gen- 
tiles, very little being then known concerning the life 
of Jesus while on earth, forty or more years having 
elapsed since his death, the early Christians dili- 
gently searched the Scriptures to find all the proph- 
ecies concerning the Messiah, believing that all of 
them had been fulfilled in Jesus. So we have reason 
to believe that the life of Jesus was clothed with a 
number of incidents, not because they were known 
to have actually occurred, but because the Christians 
believed they must have occurred in order to fulfill 
Old Testament prophecies. For example, the un- 
likely story that the clothing of Jesus was divided by 
lot among the Roman soldiers after the crucifixion. 
This incident came to be inserted in the Gospels for 
the reason that the early Christians sincerely be- 



JESUS THE MESSIAH 127 

lieved it to have actually occurred in fulfillment of 
the passage in Psalms 22:18: "They part my gar- 
ments among them, and upon my vesture do they 
cast lots." For a similar reason the Gospels state 
when Jesus made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem 
he rode upon an ass, or upon a colt as stated by Mark. 
The Christians believed he must have done so be- 
cause of the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9: "Rejoice 
greatly, oh daughter of Zion ; shout, oh daughter of 
Jerusalem ; behold thy king cometh unto thee ; he is 
just, and having salvation; lowly and riding upon 
an ass, even upon a colt the foal of an ass." 

The prophecies in the Old Testament relative to 
the Messiah are as a rule expressed in language of 
vague and obscure meaning. Had they been divinely 
inspired they would have been clearly expressed, 
with no doubt as to their meaning. Many of them 
are enigmatic in form and capable of just about as 
many interpretations as were wont to be the Del- 
phian oracles of old. 

When we read all that is said in the Old Testa- 
ment concerning the Messiah, we gather a strong 
impression that he is intended to become the deliv- 
erer or saviour of his own people only, the Jews. 
One or two of the Old Testament prophets more or 
less expressly state that he will be the saviour of all 
mankind, but it is very evident from their writings 
that even they believed that the promised Messiah 
would be first and foremost the deliverer of their own 
people. How can we possibly regard Jesus as the 
Messiah or saviour of the Jews? Much the larger 
portion of them never did believe in him. The Chris- 
tian Jews probably at no time constituted more than 



128 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

one-twentieth the population of Palestine. In a com- 
paratively short time after Jesus' death, practically 
all of them, no doubt with sincerity, renounced all 
faith in his divinity and messiahship. Up to this 
day the entire Jewish race, almost without exception, 
do not believe in him. 

The Christian doctrine expressly sets forth that 
all those who do not beUeve in Jesus as being the 
Christ shall be damned (Mark 16:16), and the wrath 
of God abideth on them (John 4:36). In place then 
of the Old Testament prophecies having been ful- 
filled in Jesus, we find this difference between the 
Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament 
the Messiah is set forth as the saviour of the Jewish 
race. In the New Testament he is set forth, in the 
person of Jesus Christ, not as their saviour, but vir- 
tually as condemning them because of their want of 
faith in him. 

Like all the people of his time and race, Jesus of 
Nazareth believed in the coming of the Messiah, and 
that his coming was nigh. It is stated in the Gospels 
that he began his public ministry by declaring, 
"The kingdom of heaven is at hand." To a large 
majority of Jews the kingdom of heaven was just 
another term for the kingdom of Jehovah. The es- 
tablishment on earth of the kingdom of Jehovah to 
them meant the conquering and driving out of their 
foes, the Romans, the banishment of all oppression 
and the inauguration of an era of peace and prosper- 
ity. The establishment of a national kingdom with a 
king of the lineage of David on the throne, this is 
what the great body of Jews were looking for and 
expecting with the coming of the Messiah. Jesus of 



JESUS THE MESSIAH 129 

Nazareth evidently had a quite different view of the 
nature and purpose of the expected Messiah. He 
was a student of the prophets and like them, or at 
least some of them, he believed that the expected 
Messiah would establish on earth a kingdom of right- 
eousness, inflicting punishment on all wickedness 
whether found in Jew or Gentile. He fully realized 
that the mere restoration of national power to the 
Jews, with the banishment of all worldly oppression, 
would not make them a better or more worthy peo- 
ple, but more likely would increase the wickedness 
and corruption that then prevailed among them. 

We are not told just when the Nazarene became 
convinced that Jehovah intended him to be the Mes- 
siah. He had been preceded by John the Baptist in 
proclaiming that the kingdom of Jehovah was at 
hand. After the Baptist's imprisonment he virtually 
became his successor in the effort to reform the Jew- 
ish people and calling them to repentance. It must 
have gradually dawned on him that he was intended 
to be the Messiah. Circumstances there were no 
doubt of which we know nothing that confirmed him 
in this belief. The first evidence we have of it in the 
Gospels is a conversation reported to have taken 
place between him and his disciples in Caesarea 
Philippi. He asked them, "Who do men say that I 
am?" This was followed by the query, "But who 
say ye that I am ?" The answer of Peter was, "Thou 
art the Messiah." Jesus is said to have asked them 
not to tell it to any man. It appears that later when 
his kinsmen heard that he regarded himself as the 
Messiah they could not refrain from saying, "He is 
beside himself" (Mark 3:21), and they tried "to lay 



130 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

hold on him," doubtless with the view of taking him 
home and trying to dissuade him from his, what 
they believed, rash and irrational purpose. 

There was nothing at all strange in the Nazarene 
believing himself to be the Messiah. Both before 
and after his time there were men who believed 
themselves to be such. Some of them had more im- 
mediate followers than did he. From all that we find 
in the Old Testament the Messiah was not regarded 
or expected to be a divine being. Nor was there any- 
thing strange in his believing that he was sent from 
or selected by Jehovah to be the deliverer of his 
people. Jehovah had selected their first leader, 
Moses; He had selected their first kings, Saul and 
David, and it was believed that He would at the 
proper time select for them a Messiah. Jesus fully 
realized to what depths of sin the Jews of his time 
had fallen. "A faithless and perverse generation" 
and *'a generation of vipers" he at times called them. 
He well saw that the Romans were not their only 
oppressors. The Jews were being robbed by their 
own people, by the tax gatherers and by those who 
practiced extortion in their sacrificial worship. 
Their sacred Temple had become a den of thieves. 
All the social evils had become rampant among them. 
The whole Jewish religion had become sadly per- 
verted by the Scribes and Pharisees. Jesus well saw, 
as we believe, that a Messiah such as the Jews were 
looking for, a worldly ruler who would restore a 
Jewish kingdom, would not make the people more 
righteous, but would likely make them still more 
worldly and corrupt. The only hope for the nation 
lay in reform, thoro reform, and that Jesus felt would 



JESUS THE MESSIAH 131 

have to be the work of the Messiah. To bring con- 
demnation upon the Pharisees, to drive the extor- 
tioners out of the Temple, to bring back the religion 
on its true basis, to free the people from all impuri- 
ties, to convince them that Jehovah, in place of being 
a cruel taskmaster, was their loving Father ; to estab- 
lish the kingdom of God, not without, but within the 
human heart, these were the duties that would fall 
within the province of the Messiah to fulfill. If with 
God's help he could accomplish all this, he truly 
would be the Messiah or saviour of his people. 

Jesus regarded himself the Messiah evidently in 
the sense as gathering up in himself the various lines 
of Old Testament hopes and promises. The Gospels 
state that on different occasions he read Scriptural 
passages from Isaiah and Zechariah pertaining to the 
expected Messiah and that he applied them to him- 
self. He must have been deeply impressed with the 
53rd chapter of Isaiah and the 22nd chapter ot 
Psalms in which the Messiah is set forth as a suf- 
ferer, as despised and rejected of men, as having 
the iniquity of all his people laid upon him, as pour- 
ing out his soul unto death whereby he bare the sins 
of many and made intercession for the transgressors. 
Jesus must have believed that in him as the Messiah 
these prophecies would be fulfilled and that he would 
meet with a violent death. He had reason to become 
confirmed in this belief from the growing hostile 
feeling against him on the part of the ruling powers 
in Jerusalem. He doubtless saw that the bitter en- 
mity of the Pharisees and members of the sanhedrim 
would end in nothing short of his death. At various 
times in the presence of his disciples he is said to 



132 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

have foretold that he would be killed and that on the 
third day he would rise again. And yet it would 
seem that before final death came to him, he fully ex- 
pected that Jehovah would in some way intervene in 
his behalf, for there certainly was bitter disappoint- 
ment expressed in his last words on the cross as 
given in both Matthew and Mark: "My God, my 
God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 

The Nazarene's conception of himself as the Mes- 
siah was altogether different from the conception of 
Jesus as now held by the Christian church. The 
Christian doctrine is that Jesus is "Very God" or 
part of the godhead. Jesus believed that he was 
simply the chosen servant of God. We are told in 
Matthew 12:17 that he applied to himself the words 
of the prophet as spoken in Isaiah 42:1, "Behold my 
servant, whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my 
soul delighteth ; I have put my spirit upon him ; he 
will bring forth justice to the Gentiles." The Chris- 
tian doctrine of expiation and atonement did not 
originate with Jesus, nor did he at any time even 
intimate that our salvation depended on our faith 
in him as our divine Saviour. 

The Christians regard Jesus as the Saviour of all 
mankind. Jesus regarded himself as the Messiah oi 
saviour of his own people only. According to Mat- 
thew 10:5, when he sends forth his disciples to make 
converts, he charges them, "Go not into any way of 
the Gentiles and enter not into any city of the Sa- 
maritans." And in Matthew 15 :24 he says, "I was 
not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of 
Israel." His alleged command to his disciples as 
given in Matt. 28 :19, "Go ye therefore and make dis- 



JESUS THE MESSIAH 133 

ciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name 
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," 
cannot be correct and must have been a subsequent 
insertion, for it is directly contrary to what he said 
or commanded on other occasions. That he gave no 
such command to his disciples is proved also by the 
fact that after his death they for a time insisted that 
a Gentile must first become a proselyte to Judaism 
before he could become a Christian. That Jesus did 
not take a world view of the messiahship is further 
evidenced in Matthew 19 :28, where he is reported to 
have said, *'When the Son of Man shall sit on the 
throne of his glory, ye (his disciples) also shall sit 
upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of 
Israel." He thus plainly intimates that when the 
kingdom of Jehovah shall come, it will be strictly a 
Jewish kingdom. 

To Jesus alone can we look for a correct concep- 
tion of the Messiah. His conception differed from 
that of the Jews who centered in the Messiah all 
hope for the material prosperity of their nation. His 
conception differed from that of the Christians, who 
regarded the Messiah as the Son of God, Very God 
or substantially one with God, who came on earth 
to redeem the whole human family from sin by the 
shedding of his blood in a cruel death, to ransom us 
from Satan and in satisfaction of divine justice, as 
we shall see in the following chapter. Jesus consid- 
ered himself the Messiah, not as "Very God," but as 
the chosen servant of God, whose mission was to 
teach his people the error of their ways and bring 
them to repentance. He appears to have had in 



134 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

mind the redemption of his own people only, but his 
teachings so very much surpassed all that had ever 
been before taught, that they came gradually to be 
accepted by the whole civilized world, and so he 
truly became the Messiah of mankind. 



CHAPTER III. 



The Vicarious Atonement. 

According to Christian belief, sin entered into the 
world thru the disobedience of the first man, Adam, 
and in consequence of sin man became separated 
from God. According to the doctrine of the vicari- 
ous atonement, a reconciliation has taken place 
between God and man thru or by means of the 
earthly life, sufferings and death of Jesus Christ. 
"When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God 
by the death of his Son," says Paul in Romans 5 :10. 
The Christians maintain, however, that this recon- 
ciliation will be of no avail to the individual unless 
he places implicit faith in the redeeming blood of 
Jesus and accepts him as his Saviour. 

All Christians agree that Jesus thru his death has 
enabled God to forgive sinners, but just in what way 
Jesus' death fulfilled this purpose, there has been 
much difference of opinion. Origen and Irenaeus, 
two of the more prominent of the apostolic fathers, 
maintained that mankind in consequence of our first 
parents' disobedience, had fallen under the dominion 
of Satan and that Jesus by his sufferings and death 
paid a ransom to Satan in order that we might be 
freed from his power. They held that Christ could 
have delivered us from the dominion of Satan by 
his own power, but that justice required that Satan 
be paid a ransom, and that as a ransom he demanded 
Christ's own life. To satisfy Satan's demands Christ 
became human, for it was only as a human being 



136 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

that he could give up his life. This was also the 
belief held by St. Augustine and this was in fact 
the doctrine of the Christian church as to the atone- 
ment for more than a thousand years. 

Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury and the great- 
est theologian of his age, was the author of quite a 
different theory. He was a Roman, and like all Ro- 
mans, he was a great stickler after the law. He 
based his theory on the law of debt and payment. 
His theory of the atonement was that of "satisfac- 
tion." He maintained that the payment was made 
to God and not to the devil. Satan had nothing to do 
with it. He defined sin as not paying to God what 
we owe him. Whenever a man disobeys God he in- 
curs the guilt of sin, and the honor and justice of 
(jod require satisfaction more than mere punish- 
ment. Repentance is not a sufficient remedy. Man 
sinning against the infinite God is infinitely guilty 
and his sin cannot be atoned for save by an infinite 
satisfaction. No one but God can pay such a debt, 
therefore Jesus became God-man. But why, it may 
be asked, the necessity for the death of Jesus? Why 
could not the life alone atone? Here we reach the 
most original part of Anselm's theory. Christ, says 
Anselm, could not make satisfaction to God by his 
life, however perfect, because as a man he was 
bound always to do right. That was all he could do, 
to live right, so there was no merit to spare. Noth- 
ing could be gained then by his life. Not so with his 
death. This, which in the case of other men, is the 
judicial consequence of sin, is, in the case of Christ, 
a voluntary offering or sacrifice not due to God, but 
which Jesus freely gives in exchange for the for- 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT 137 

giveness of man. This is the infinite satisfaction 
which secures the salvation of man. 

The Anselm theory of the atonement prevailed in 
the Christian world till the time of the Reformation. 
The views of our modern theologians, while they 
vary considerably, are in the main amplifications or 
modifications of the Anselm theory. There are 
those among them who represent the sufferings and 
death of Jesus as a satisfaction due to the honour 
of God ; there are others w^ho represent his suflfer- 
ings and death as a penalty demanded by God's jus- 
tice, and not a few of them go back to the original 
view and represent the atoning character of his death 
as a ransom to redeem men from Satan. 

The doctrine of the atonement is based on the fall 
of our first parents. The mystic Garden of Eden 
story is an ancient Chaldean allegory designed to ac- 
count for the introduction and presence of sin and 
evil in the world. In it we have a speaking serpent 
and God walking in a human way in the cool of the 
day in the garden. The difficulties of taking it as 
literal history are so great that many distinguished 
and so-called orthodox theologians construe it as 
having a figurative meaning. But if it is not to be 
taken literally, what becomes of the precise act of 
disobedience and the fall, and what necessity was 
there for the atonement? It is said that Adam and 
Eve were free agents and that God could not inter- 
fere to save them from the w^les of Satan. But such 
free agency as Adam and Eve had was a delusion. 
They were free agents in the sense that you would 
call infants such. The Genesis account itself says 
that they did not know good from evil, or right from 



138 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

wrong. They were no match for the tempter in 
whom was the embodiment of guile and treachery. 
It may be asked, did not God make Adam? Did he 
not place him in circumstances where he knew he 
would fall? He pronounced his creation good and 
yet the crowning mark of His creation in a very 
brief time turned out to be anything else but good. 
The disobedience of our first parents was no greater 
than any ordinary violation of God's laws by inno- 
cent children, and yet this disobedience, we are told, 
caused the downfall and ruin of the whole human 
race. It seems sacrilegious to believe that our God 
would inflict a punishment so altogether out of pro- 
portion to the wrong committed. If we resign our 
belief in the fall of Adam, we must resign our belief 
in the vicarious atonement, as the two are indis- 
solubly connected. 

The belief that Jesus offered himself as an atoning 
sacrifice was a natural development from the then 
Jewish mode of worship, which largely consisted of 
sacrifices of living victims. The writer of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews in the 9th chapter makes an argu- 
ment that the blood of Christ under the new cove- 
nant has much more of a redeeming power than had 
the blood of goats and of calves under the old cove- 
nant, and that the latter was anticipatory of the 
former. 

Sacrificial worship was not original with the He- 
brews. It was the usual mode of worship in primi- 
tive times. A sacrifice primarily is a meal or repast 
offered to the Diety. It usually was burnt so that 
the sweet savour might arise in the shape of food 
for the god. "It is an offering made by fire of a 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT 139 

sweet savour unto Jehovah" (Leviticus 3 :5). Occa- 
sionally sacrifices were offered to pay homage and 
give thanks to the Deity, sometimes they were of- 
fered to win the favor of the Deity in some particular 
undertaking, but the great underlying motive in 
most sacrifices offered was to appease the wrath of 
the Deity, incurred because of man's sins and short- 
comings. Shed blood was believed to be an offer- 
ing specially gratifying to the tribal god. The party 
making the offering was supposed to offer on the 
altar something of special value to himself. The 
greater the value, the more pleasing it would be to 
the Deity. What is more valuable than human life 
and what life is more precious than that of a son or 
daughter? So parents in some countries were wont 
to offer a child in sacrifice. The Hebrew prophets 
condemned human sacrifices, and yet there were 
times when human victims were offered in sacrifice 
even by the Hebrews. Abraham must have been 
acquainted with the practice when he intended to 
offer his son Isaac on an altar in Moriah. Jepthah 
must have been acquainted with the practice when 
in fulfillment of a vow he offered for a burnt-offering 
his only daughter. In Jeremiah 7 :31 and in 2 Kings 
17 :17 we read that there were times when it became 
more or less common for the children of both Judah 
and Israel "to burn their sons and daughters in the 
fire." The sacrifice of royal children was deemed 
especially eflficacious. The king of Moab one time 
offered his oldest son as a burnt offering (2 Kings 
3 :27). Ahaz, one of the kings of Judah, had his son 
burnt on the altar of sacrifice (2 Kings 16:3), and so 
did Manasseh, one of the kinc^s of Israel (2 Kins:s 



140 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

21 :6). These practices, whenever mentioned in the 
Old Testament, are always condemned. But we 
must remember that the many warnings and con- 
demnations of their prophets were usually but little 
heeded by the Jews. Human victims were that often 
offered by them in sacrifice that it is reasonable to 
infer that the most efficacious sacrifice that could be 
offered, the most pleasing to Jehovah, they believed 
to be that of a human life. 

As we observed in a previous article, the Jewish 
sacrificial mode of worship was not approved of by 
several of the Old Testament prophets. They fully 
believed that the shedding of blood on the altar of 
sacrifice was displeasing to Jehovah. Samuel says, 
''Behold to obey is better than sacrifice, and to 
hearken than the fat of rams" (1 Sam. 15:22). We 
quote from the first chapter of Isaiah : "What unto 
me is the multitude of your sacrifices? saith Jehovah. 
I have had enough of the burnt offerings of rams and 
the fat of fed beasts, and I delight not in the blood 

of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats, 

yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear, 
your hands are full of blood." In Psalms 40:6 we 
read, "Sacrifice and ofiFering Thou (Jehovah) hast 
no delight in." In Hosea 6:6 we find, "For I desire 
goodness and not sacrifice." 

The doctrine of atonement, then, grew out of and 
was founded on the ancient Jewish sacrificial mode 
of worship that had already been discredited by the 
better class of Israel's prophets. The belief that the 
shed blood of Jesus atoned for man's sins was based 
on and had its origin in the suppoed efficacy of the 
Jewish bloody oflPerings which Israel's own prophets 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT 141 

claimed were not approved of by Jehovah. That the 
new belief is based on the old is directly stated in 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, 9th chapter. If the doc- 
trine of the atonement is based on a false premise, 
then it must itself be false. 

If Jesus, the Son of God, was crucified by some of 
the descendants of Adam, in place of this appeasing 
God's wrath or of satisfying justice, would not a 
more reasonable inference be that it would have in- 
creased the wrath of God or made the satisfaction 
of justice still more difficult? It has been well said : 
"Justice never finds satisfaction in the punishment ot 
innocence, no matter if the innocent party does offer 
himself of his own accord to be punished." Anothe* 
has said: "If God is infinite love, there can be no 
anger to appease." Another asks the question: 
"How were all the good men and women of old, 
truly penitent for their sins, saved before Jesus of- 
fered himself an atoning sacrifice? If they were for- 
given, why is an atonement nece.«^sary now?" And 
it may be added, if the self-sacrifice of Jesus brings 
salvation to those who believe in him, does not 
this necessarily imply unjust di.«crimination shown 
against the millions who lived before Jesus' time 
and the millions since who have had no opportunity 
of believing in and accepting hin as their Saviour? 

What the views of Jesus himself were on this im- 
portant subject it is difficult to determine. The same 
as on a number of other subjects, we can from the 
Gospels quote words of his that appear in favor of, 
and we can quote other words of his that appear 
against, the doctrine in question. It is another proof 
of what we have previously maintained, namely, that 



142 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

the Gospels at later periods received additions to, or 
slight modifications of, their texts so as to make the 
texts conform with later beliefs of the early Chris- 
tians. Unquestionably strong proof in favor of the 
atonement is furnished by the institution of the 
Eucharist or Lord's Supper. There are, however, a 
number of variances found in the several accounts of 
it, and there are other difficulties which detract from 
the importance this sacrament is given in the Gos- 
pels. The exact words of Jesus spoken in the ad- 
ministration of this sacrament we should think 
would be of the utmost significance and that care 
would have been taken to preserve the exact words 
used. They differ, however, in all of the Gospels 
and all differ from the words as given by Paul in 
1 Cor. 11:23-26. A phrase of much importance, 
"unto remission of sins," is given in only one of 
them (Matt. 26:28), and is omitted in the others. 
Matthew alone has the injunctions, after the deliv- 
ery of the bread and the cup, "Eat" and "Drink ye 
all of it," while Mark has simply, "and they all drank 
of it" (Mark 14:23). A close examination of the 
texts will show a number of other slight variances. 
Bread and wine had always been used by the Jews 
as an offering to Jehovah of the fruits of the earth. 
Religious meals were common among them, in 
which there was a solemn benediction of the bread 
and cup, followed at the close of the meal by a 
prayer of thanksgiving. What is now termed the 
Eucharist was the meal or feast of the Passover 
which Jesus partook of with his disciples shortly be- 
fore his crucifixion. What made it specially memor- 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT 143 

able to the disciples was that it was the last meal 
they had with their master. 

The meal of the Passover, partaken of by Jesus 
with his disciples shortly before his death, and on 
which the Eucharist was founded, is an ancient Jew- 
ish feast. It was instituted to commemorate the es- 
cape of the Hebrews when Jehovah, smiting the first 
born of the Egyptians, passed over the houses of the 
Israelites that were marked with the blood of the 
paschal lamb. Under the Old Covenant of Jehovah 
with the Hebrews, the Passover became their main 
annual feast, the essential feature of which was the 
offering of the paschal lamb. Under the New Cove- 
nant, as previously stated, the celebration of the 
Eucharist took the place of the feast of the Passover, 
and the shed blood of Jesus took the place of the 
offering of the paschal lamb. 

Thus we find that the Eucharist, or the Lord*s 
Supper, is founded not only on the bloody sacrificial 
worship of the Jews, but is also based on an an- 
cient Jewish legend, the incredible story of Jehovah 
cruelly slaying the innocent first-born in every single 
family thruout Egypt simply because King Pharaoh 
would not permit the Hebrews to leave the country. 

Jesus believing himself to be the Messiah, a suf- 
fering Messiah, as portrayed in the 53rd chapter of 
Isaiah, must have felt that he would meet with death 
because of the transgressions and iniquities of his 
people. From many of his teachings a reasonable 
inference is that he fully believed he was giving his 
life, not to reconcile God to man, but to reconcile 
man to God. When man disobeys God's commands 
he naturally feels that he has displeased Him. The 



144 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

feeling produced in him, because of his sins, is one 
of estrangement and alienation from his God. The 
purpose of Jesus was to remove that feeling of 
estrangement by impressing on the minds of men 
God's infinite love. The Christian theologians have 
all along maintained that the reconciliation was an 
effect produced on the mind of God, but Jesus evi- 
dently felt that it was an effect produced on the 
mind of man. God's character is not changed by 
anything man can do. His character is unchange- 
able. 

There are a number of teachings of Jesus given 
in the Gospels which necessarily imply that he did 
not consider a vicarious atonement at all necessary 
for the remission of man's sins. Repentance he fre- 
quently makes the sole condition for the forgiveness 
of sins. To his disciples he said, "whosoever's sins 
ye remit, they are remitted unto them." In his Lord's 
prayer we have, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive 
those who sin against us." Jesus here makes the 
forgiveness of sins solely dependent on man's peni- 
tent disposition and his willingness to forgive others. 
It in no wise presupposes, as a condition, a propitia- 
tion of God or satisfaction of justice by a substitu- 
tional atonement. The pure in heart and the meek 
in spirit, he says, shall see God and theirs is the 
kingdom of heaven — no atonement necessary for 
them. In his parable of the prodigal son his purpose 
was to impress on our minds that God is our Father, 
who waits for us erring children to return to Him 
even as the father of the prodigal son waited. Obedi- 
ence, a pure heart, service, repentance for past sins 
and forgiveness of others, are made the sole prere- 



THE VICARIOUS ATONEMENT 145 

quisites for our salvation. That faith in the redeem- 
ing power of the shed blood of Jesus is our only hope 
of salvation, was purely of human invention in the 
dark days of superstition. 

The doctrine of the vicarious atonement is 
founded on three things which we cannot endorse : 

First. The garden of Eden myth and the alleged 
curse pronounced against our first parents for eating 
of the forbidden fruit, involving the curse of their 
descendants to this day. 

Second. The bloody sacrifices of the Jews, which 
were condemned by even some of Israel's own 
prophets. 

Third. The offering of the paschal lamb at the 
feast of the Passover in commemoration of an al- 
leged event which could not possibly have occurred 
because of its barbarous cruelty. 



CHAPTER IV 



The Virgin Birth 

The Gospels of the New Testament give us two 
different views with regard to the nativity of Jesus. 
The first chapters of both Matthew and Luke in- 
form us that he was conceived by the Holy Ghost 
and born of a virgin. In many other parts of the 
Gospels it is set forth that he was the son of Joseph 
and through Joseph a direct lineal descendant from 
David. It is hardly necessary to state that if he 
was miraculously born without a human father, he 
could not have had any of Joseph's blood in him and 
could not have been through Joseph of the lineage 
of David. Both of these views cannot be correct. 
One or the other must be wrong. 

The Jews were not agreed as to the nature and 
character of the long expected Messiah, but a large 
majority of them believed that he would be a mere 
temporal ruler and a lineal descendant of David. 
Their nation had attained the zenith of its greatness 
and prosperity under the rule of David and they 
were longing for another David to appear. Another 
and probably the principal reason why they were 
looking for another David was because of Jehovah's 
supposed covenant with him that He would build the 
house of David into an everlasting dynasty, as stat- 
ed in 2 Samuels 7-12, 13: 'T (Jehovah) will set up 
thy (David's) seed after thee, that shall proceed out 
of thv bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. He 
shall build a house for my name and I will establish 
the throne of his kingdom forever." 



THE VIRGIN BIRTH 147 

After Jesus came to be regarded as the Messiah, 
the genealogies as given in Matthew and Luke were 
prepared to establish his lineage from David through 
his father Joseph. If Jesus had been born of a vir- 
gin, without a human father, if he had not been be- 
gotten of Joseph, just as Isaac was begotten of Abra- 
ham or as Jacob was begotten of Isaac, he could not 
have been descended from David, and these gen- 
ealogies would have been of no significance what- 
ever. Doesn't it appear very evident, then, that at 
the time these genealogies were placed in and made 
part of the gospels of Matthew and of Luke, there 
could have been no belief in and no knowledge of 
the virgin birth. 

In Matthew 1 :16 the genealogy reads : "And Jacob 
begat Joseph, the husband of Mary of whom was 
born Jesus, who is called Christ." That such was 
not the original reading is shown by the recent dis- 
covery of the Sinaitic Syrian Gospels, which are the 
earliest of all known witnesses to the Scripture text, 
and herein Matthew 1 :16 is given as follows : "And 
Jacob begat Joseph and Joseph, to whom was es- 
poused Mary the virgin, begat Jesus." Here it is 
specifically stated that Joseph begat Jesus. Even 
in this the earliest of all known texts it is a question 
whether the clause, "To whom was espoused Mary 
the virgin" was not a subsequent insertion. In the 
genealogical table given in Luke, Jesus' lineage is 
given as "being the son (as was supposed) of 
Joseph.'* The phrase "as was supposed" was placed 
in parenthesis, evidently because there was good 
ground for believing that it was not in the text orig- 
inally but was likewise a subsequent insertion. It is 



148 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

sometimes claimed that Jesus was a lineal descend- 
ant of David through his mother Mary. Both 
Matthew and Luke, however, trace his genealogy 
back to David, not through his mother, but through 
his father. Moreover, it was the custom among 
the Hebrews to trace an ancestry through the male 
line. 

The genealogies, then, as given in Matthew and 
Luke, plainly prove that Jesus was originally re- 
garded as having been ordinarily born like other 
men, that Joseph was his actual father and that 
through Joseph he was a lineal descendant of David. 
A reasonable inference is that the virgin birth doc- 
trine was not the original belief and that it must 
have had a subsequent origin in tradition. 

If the Holy Ghost, and not man, was the father 
of Jesus, if his birth was heralded by angels and all 
the other wonderful events accompanying his na- 
tivity were true as recorded in the first chapters of 
Matthew and Luke, we would naturally suppose 
that they made so lasting an impression on his par- 
ents, Joseph and Mary, that they never would have 
lost sight of them as long as they lived. But, on the 
contrary, all subsequent events as narrated in the 
gospels plainly show that, if they really occurred, the 
parents had in a short time entirely forgotten them. 
Only six weeks after Jesus' birth, Joseph and Mary 
marveled at Simeon's discourse in the Temple, de- 
claring him to be the Christ. Why should they 
have marveled at what they already must have 
known. When he was twelve years of age his par- 
ents found him sitting in the midst of the doctors. 



THE VIRGIN BIRTH 149 

hearing them and asking them questions, and again 
they were amazed. His own mother does not seem 
to know that he had no human father for she repre- 
sents Joseph as his father. "Thy father Joseph and 
I have sought thee sorrowing," she says, when they 
find him after he had been lost in the Temple. His 
mother and his brethren not only seem altogether 
unconscious of any unwonted circumstance in con- 
nection with his life, but "they did not believe in 
him" (John 7:5) and were skeptical as to his mes- 
sianic claims. At one time his friends and kinsmen 
even tried to lay hold on him and take him to his 
home, alleging that he was beside himself (Mark 3: 
21 and 31). All this is the strongest kind of evi- 
dence, the more conclusive because it is indirect, 
that his parents knew nothing of the virgin birth. 

Thruout the entire New Testament no men- 
tion is made of the immaculate conception, save in 
the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Mark and John 
make no mention of it. It is not even alluded to by 
Matthew and Luke except in their first chapters. If 
these two chapters were dropped out, nowhere else 
in the New Testament is there an assertion or an 
obvious and unambiguous implication of the virgin 
birth. Jesus himself never refers to it. Mark could 
not have known of it, for he not only implies but 
plainly asserts that Jesus was the son of Joseph, the 
carpenter of Nazareth. Paul refutes it when he states 
in Romans 1 : 3, "Concerning his son our Lord who 
was born of the seed of David according to the flesh." 
When Peter on the day of Pentecost is urging upon 
his hearers that Jesus is the promised Messiah, he 



150 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

bases one of his chief arguments on the fact that 
Jesus is the son of David — "of the fruit of his loins" 
are his words (Acts 2:30). And if it be not true 
that Jesus was descended from David in the male 
line, according to Hebrew custom, all the Penta- 
teuchal reasoning of Peter falls to the ground. 
Plainly these opening chapters of Matthew and 
of Luke originally were not integral parts of the 
Gospels, but were written and inserted after belief 
in the virgin birth began to prevail among the Chris- 
tians. 

The two accounts of the nativity of Jesus as given 
in the introductory chapters of Matthew and Luke 
are quite different stories. They agree on only two 
points, that he was born of a virgin and that he was 
born in Bethlehem. In all other particulars they 
have nothing in common. In Matthew it is the an" 
gel of the Lord who appears, in Luke the angel 
Gabriel; in Matthew the angel appears to Joseph, 
in Luke he appears to Mary; in Matthew the angel 
is only an apparition appearing to Joseph in a 
dream, in Luke the angel actually appears in hu- 
man form to Mary while she is awake. It does not 
necessarily follow that these two accounts contradict 
one another in this, for angels may have appeared 
to both Mary and Joseph, though it does strike one 
as strange that Luke should mention only the ap- 
pearance to Mary and Matthew mention only the 
appearance to Joseph, and that the nature of the 
appearances should be entirely different, an actual 
appearance in the one and only a dream in the other. 
But there is one point in their accounts in which 



THE VIRGIN BIRTH 151 

Matthew and Luke absolutely are at variance. Ac- 
cording to Matthew the home of Joseph and Mary 
at the time of Jesus' birth was in Bethlehem. It was 
only after their return from Egypt, when they were 
afraid to go back to Bethlehem because Archelaus, 
son of Herod, was king, that they went up north 
into Galilee and "dwelt in a city called Nazareth." 
According to Luke the home of Joseph and Mary 
was at Nazareth from the very first, the birth occur- 
ring at Bethlehem simply because the parents had 
gone there to be taxed. 

Luke's account of the alleged miraculous birth is 
poetical in character throughout. Mary gives utter- 
ance to a long song in making her announcement to 
Elizabeth, a second long poem is recited by Zachar- 
ias, a third song is sung by a multitude of angels 
while appearing at night before some shepherds who 
were out in a field keeping watch over their flock, 
and still another song is recited by Simeon when the 
child Jesus is brought by his parents into the Tem- 
ple. The whole story you would naturally classify, 
not as historical, but as a highly poetic and imagina- 
tive production. 

After the angel announces to Mary that she shall 
have a son conceived by the Holy Ghost, Mary 
travels some distance and goes to Elizabeth to ap- 
prize her of it. The news causes Elizabeth to make 
a long speech and Mary then gives utterance to a 
long poem of 140 words. The long speech made by 
each could not have been taken down verbatim as 
they were spoken. How were they preserved? The 
nature of the long speeches are just what we would 
expect in a poetic production, but they are not what 



152 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

we naturally would suppose were the utterances of 
Elizabeth and Mary under the circumstance. 

The appearance of the angel Gabriel before Mary 
to announce the coming birth of her son, appears 
highly improbable from the very words which the 
angel is said to have uttered. These are his words : 
"Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and 
bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He 
shall be great and shall be called the Son of the 
Most High, and the Lord God shall give unto him 
the throne of his father David and he shall reign 
over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom 
there shall be no end." (Luke 1-32, 33.) This al- 
leged announcement of the angel is purely Jewish in 
character. The Son's reign, in place of extending 
over all mankind, is confined to the house of Jacob, 
or Israel. In place of foretelling the coming of the 
Christian Messiah who would give his life as an 
atoning sacrifice for men's sins, the angel's message 
is in full accord with the Jewish expectation of a 
national Messiah, who was to be of the lineage oi 
David and of whose Davidic dynasty there was to 
be no end. 

The nativity of Jesus as related in Matthew is 
just as improbable as that in Luke. In truth the 
account is on a much lower plane than that in Luke. 
The birth story is more physical and sensual. That 
in Luke was probably the production of an educated 
Christian convert of Rome, who had the poetic tal- 
ent of an Ovid or Horace. That in Matthew ap- 
pears to be the production of a Jew, for he takes 
special pains to make the incidents of his story con- 



THE VIRGIN BIRTH 153 

form with the messianic prophecies of the Old Tes- 
tament. 

In Matthew's account we have a touch of oriental 
mysticism as seen in the heralding of the star and 
in the procession of the Magi who come from the 
East to Jerusalem, saying : ** Where is he that is born 
king of the Jews? For we saw his star in the East 
and are come to worship him. Astrology, largely 
believed in at the beginning of the Christian era, is 
now discredited as a false science, but the belief was 
general then that stars are always the forerunners 
of great events. 

When the virgin birth of Jesus became the accept- 
ed belief among the Christians, for the purpose of 
confirming their belief, the Old Testament Scrip- 
tures were searched to see whether the virgin birth 
had not been foretold by the prophets. A number of 
incidents connected with the birth, as described in 
the first two chapters of Matthew, had their origin 
quite probably in supposed fulfillments of prophecy. 
The account of the wise men following a star to 
Jerusalem and there asking, ''Where is he that is 
born king of the Jews?" had its origin in prophecies 
of Jeremiah and in a prophecy of Balaam (Numbers 
24:17). Joseph is believed to have fled with Mary 
and the babe into Egypt, a very unlikely thing for 
him to have done, so as to fulfill a prophecy made by 
Hosea, namely : "Out of Egypt did I call my son." 
King Herod is believed to have slain all the children, 
two years old and under, in and around Bethlehem, 
an alleged event nowhere else mentioned, that there 
mijp-ht be fulfilled the words of Jeremiah the prophet, 
as follows : "A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping 



154 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her chil- 
dren ; and she would not be comforted, because they 
are not." When you read these and other incidents 
in the life of Jesus, alleged to have occurred in order 
that ''it might be fulfilled which was spoken through 
the prophets'' the impression they leave on your 
mind is that in place of prophecy foretelling history, 
history is adapted to prophecy. 

The virgin birth was believed by the early Chris- 
tians to have been foretold in the prophecy given in 
Isaiah 7:14, as follows: "Therefore the Lord him- 
self will give you (King Ahaz) a sign : behold a vir- 
gin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his 
name Immanuel." When we read in Isaiah what goes 
before and what follows the above quoted passage, it 
appears very evident that the birth the prophet had 
in mind was a birth that was to happen not cen- 
turies afterward, but within a short time and within 
the lifetime of King Ahaz. Of what avail would the 
sign be to Ahaz, of what benefit could it possibly be 
to him, if it were not to occur until 400 years after- 
ward? That the child was to be named Immanuel, 
meaning ''God is with us," has no particular signifi- 
cance. Their name for God appears in a good many 
Hebrew names. Moreover Jesus was not named 
Immanuel. We find, too, that in the original Hebrew 
text, the word that has been translated "virvin," does 
not strictly mean a virgin. Its literal meaning is, a 
young woman, and it has been so translated wher- 
ever else the word occurs in the Old Testament. 
Had a virgin really been meant, we would find in the 
original text the same Hebrew word that is used in 



THE VIRGIN BIRTH 155 

the original text of Genesis 24:16, and which is the 
proper Hebrew word for "virgin." 

Not only is there no mention made of the virgin 
birth of Jesus in the New Testament, outside of the 
first chapters of Matthew and of Luke, but it is also 
a significant fact that no mention is made of it in 
the Christian literature that immediately followed 
the gospels and Epistles of the New Testament. Not 
a word do we find about the miraculous birth either 
in the Epistles of Clement, the Pastor of Hermas, the 
Epistle to Diognetus, or in any of the other writings 
contained in the volume known as the Apostolic 
Fathers, not until we come to the very last one in 
the volume, the Epistle of St. Ignatius, who makes 
one single brief reference to it. And this brief ref- 
erence may be an interpolation, for nowhere else 
does Ignatius make mention of it. Being that the 
Apostolic Fathers, excepting Ignatius, make not the 
slightest mention of it, a plain inference is that they 
did not know of it and that the belief in it had not 
yet arisen. 

The virgin-birth story became the accepted belief 
among the early Christians not until about 120 A. D., 
or nearly 100 years after Jesus' death. Justin Mar- 
tyr, who was of Greek descent, was the first of the 
Fathers of the Church who dwelt on it in his writ- 
ings. He quotes a number of passages from the Old 
Testament, in addition to those referred to in Mat- 
thew, which he declares plainly foretold the miracu- 
lous birth of Jesus. He claims that the person whom 
Daniel saw in his vision (Daniel 7:13) was Christ, 



156 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

and that when Daniel says that he was ''like unto a 
son of man" it necessarily implied that he was dif- 
ferent from the sons of men in that he "could not 
have been born of human seed." 

Ostensibly to make the child still more immacu- 
late, one of the apocryphal gospels claimed that 
Mary, his mother, had also been born of a virgin, 
and that in her early childhood she was brought to 
the Temple by her parents, where she remained till 
her 12th year, visited and fed by angels and honored 
by divine visions. 

It is a singular fact that the founders of several 
religions, other than the Christian, are believed to 
have been of supernatural origin. Buddha, the 
great founder of Buddhism, was believed, before 
Jesus' time, to have been of heavenly origin. He is 
said to have been miraculously born of the pure and 
holy Maya, his birth was announced by the Mes- 
sianic star, and there was joy in heaven, the Devas 
singing: "Today Bodhisattva is born on earth to 
give joy and peace to men and Devas." Krishna 
while Uving was simply a great Hindu leader and 
hero, but in about 400 B. C. he was deified and was 
declared to be an incarnation of Vishnu (the Hindu 
God) and born of a chaste virgin named Devaki. The 
Indian Saviour, Gautama, was likewise believed to 
have been miraculously born of the virgin queen 
Maya. 

The Greek and Roman converts to Christianity, 
like all of their race, believed that all great men, who 
far excelled their fellow-men, were of supernatural 
origin. Origen, an early and prominent theologian 
of the Christian church, in his writings states that 



THE VIRGIN BIRTH 157 

it was then the common belief that a man equipped 
with uncommon wisdom and power must have 
sprung from higher and divine seed. Romulus, Au- 
gustus, Scipio Africanus, and a number of others, 
were believed to have been the sons of gods. Alex- 
ander the Great and Pythagoras were believed to be 
the sons of the god Zeus. The funeral oration of 
Plato's nephew, Spensippus, makes mention of the 
legend current during the great philosopher's life 
that Periktone, Plato's mother, bore him not as the 
child of her husband, but of the god Apollo. 

The virgin-birth story is not of Jewish origin. 
The Christian Jews deemed it sufficient that their 
Messiah should be a direct lineal descendant of the 
house of David. It is a belief that took its rise 
nearly 100 years after Jesus' death. It originated 
with Christian converts who belonged to a nation 
that believed all its heroes and great men had been 
miraculously born. 



CHAPTER V 



God or Man? 

We dwelt at some length, in the previous chapter, 
on the Christian belief in the virgin birth of Jesus 
because of its importance. It is so closely linked 
with the belief in his being a constituent part of the 
Godhead, that it is a question whether the two be- 
liefs must not stand or fall together. To the extent 
that our faith is impaired in the one, does it not to 
the same extent impair our faith in the other? 

We find passages in the synoptic gospels which 
clearly indicate that Jesus must have been divine, 
we find other passages in the same gospels which 
just as clearly indicate that he was regarded, not as 
divine, but no more than simply as a man. Which 
are correct? A reasonable presumption is that dur- 
ing his lifetime he was regarded as purely human 
and that as time passed he gradually came to be 
clothed with divine attributes. 

The first three gospels virtually agree in all main 
particulars and for this reason are called ''synoptic." 
The fourth gospel, the Gospel According to John, 
tells quite a different story and is in some respects 
plainly contradictory of the first three. In the 
synoptic gospels Jesus' work is wholly confined to 
Galilee until the last week of his life, in the fourth 
gospel it is almost entirely in and about Jerusalem. 
In the synoptics the period of his action is one year 
at most, while the fourth gospel makes it two to 



GOD OR MAN 159 

three years, or covering three annual Passover 
feasts. The words of Jesus in the fourth gospel 
differ altogether in language and style from his 
words in the first three gospels. When you turn 
from the three to the fourth his very thoughts 
undergo a strange transformation. In place of the 
parables and the pregnant sayings in the first three, 
we have lengthy arguments and allegories in the 
fourth. John is believed to have written Revelation, 
the last book of the New Testament, but the words, 
the style and the idioms are quite different in Reve- 
lation from what they are in the fourth gospel. 

A careful reading of the fourth gospel shows an 
anti- Jewish spirit fully as pronounced as that shown 
by Paul in his contentions with the disciples, and 
this is an additional reason why it could not have 
been written by John the disciple, who was one of 
the pillars in Jerusalem and imbued with strong 
Jewish prejudices. 

In the fourth gospel the author so mixes the sup- 
posed words of Jesus with his own words and com- 
ments that it is often impossible to tell where the 
one ends and the other begins. When in it you read 
the lengthy discourses represented to have been 
delivered by Jesus, you can't help but think that 
you are reading, not Jesus* actual words, but what 
the author thinks he would have spoken on the sub- 
jects discussed. The putting into the mouth of the 
speaker supposed utterances, is a license which was 
frequently practiced in the early days. 

This gospel was written in about the year 150 
A. D. and the author of it probably was an educated 
Christian convert who belonged to the school of 



160 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

Philo. The author's evident purpose was to identify 
the Word, or "Logos," of Plato with Jesus, and to 
conform Christianity with the current Greek phil- 
osophy with the view of making Christian converts 
among the Greeks. 

The relatives of Jesus did not regard him as being 
more than human. As previously stated, there were 
times when they found fault with him and did not 
always approve of his course of action. His disciples 
regarded him as their superior but always as their 
fellow-man. They expostulated with him, and at 
one time Peter took occasion to rebuke him. Does 
this indicate that they believed him God? During 
the trial of Jesus, Peter denied he was one of his 
disciples. In the garden of Gethsemane they all 
forsook him and fled. Even after his crucifixion 
Jesus was to Peter only "a man approved of God." 
In Acts 2:36 Peter is reported to have said: "Let 
all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that 
God hath made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus 
whom ye crucified." If God made him Lord, there 
was a time when he wasn't Lord. If he made him 
Lord at his death, he could not have been Lord 
before his death. And this appears to have been the 
view of his disciples, that he became divine at his 
death and that God placed him at His right hand. 

Jesus was a prophet, as were the Baptist and the 
prophets of the Old Testament. Tho a prophet, his 
foretelling power appears to have been restricted. 
Unlimited it would have been had he been part of 
the Godhead. When speaking of the final judgment 



GOD OR MAN 161 

day, as stated in Mark 13 :32, he says that he does 
not know when that hour comes, that the Father 
alone knows. He is alleged to have wrought 
miracles, but so did the prophets of old, his disciples 
and others, as it is alleged. He performed what 
were considered wonderful cures, there is no ques- 
tion, but his power to cure diseases could not have 
been absolute or divine power. It was conditioned 
on the faith of the sick. In Mark 6 :5, it is expressly 
stated that he could ''do no mighty work" in Naza- 
reth because of the unbelief of his townsmen save 
that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk and 
healed them. In Mark 1 :32 to 34, it is stated that 
he did not cure all the sick that were brought before 
him, but that he cured many, again showing that his 
power to cure was limited. His alleged power of 
resuscitating life must have had its origin in tradi- 
tion, for reasons already given. 

The most reliable source of our knowledge con- 
cerning Jesus is his own testimony of himself. He 
called himself the son of God, but he said we all 
were the sons of God. He spoke with equal ease of 
"My Father" and "Our Father." In his sermon on 
the Mount he called all peacemakers the sons of 
God. According to the Apostles' Creed, he is "the 
only begotten Son.*' Jesus himself at no time made 
that claim. Xor did he at any time claim that he 
was part of the Godhead. He never even alluded to 
the Trinity. 

If Jesus is "Very God of Very God, being of 
one substance with the Father," as is set forth 
in the Xicene Creed, he must inherently possess 



162 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

all the attributes of God, the attributes of self- 
existence, omnipotence and omniscience. However 
on various occasions he plainly declares a positive 
limitation of his power. On one occasion, as re- 
ported in John 5 :30, he says : "I can of myself do 
nothing; as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is 
righteous ; because I seek not my own will, but the 
will of Him that sent me." These cannot be the 
words of a God. He did not claim to be perfect. On 
another occasion he said, ''Why callest thou me 
good? None is good save one, even God" (Mark 
10-18). How like a man, and how unlike a God, he 
thus speaks. 

In place of. being conscious of any superhuman 
origin or nature, he speaks as a man addressing his 
brother men. He is so meek and unpretending that 
one time he even washes the feet of his disciples. He 
did this for the purpose of more fully impressing on 
their minds the great importance of humble service 
to our fellow-men. He is a man like ourselves. He 
is beset with temptation. Can God be tempted? He 
suffers as others suffer. He has his hours of dis- 
couragement and gloom. He shows anger, annoy- 
ance, amazement. He uses the common language of 
his countrymen concerning demoniacal possession, 
believing that epilepsy and other diseases are caused 
from being possessed of a devil. Could ''the only 
Son of God, substantially one with the Father," have 
held such mistaken views? He was also mistaken in 
his belief that the world would soon come to an end. 
"For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his 
Father with his angels," he said, "and then shall he 
render unto every man according to his deeds. 



GOD OR MAN 163 

Verily I say unto you, there are some of them that 
stand here, who shall in no wise taste of death, till 
they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." 

All thru life he prayed to God as a man who places 
his absolute dependence on Him. He gave thanks to 
God for whatever he received or was able to accom- 
plish. He prayed for strength and support. How 
could the Infinite pray to the Infinite? It would 
seem as tho he had prayed to himself. While in 
Gethsemane in much sorrow he prayed : "My 
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from 
me ; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt" 
(Matt. 26:39). How like, a man this sounds, show- 
ing his absolute dependence on God. This prayer 
alone refutes all claims that '*He and the Father are 
one." According to both Matthew and Mark, the 
last words that Jesus uttered shortly before his death 
were words of momentary despair: "My God, my 
God, why hast thou forsaken me?" According to 
Luke, his last words, as would be those of any good 
man, were : "Father, into thy hands I commend my 
spirit." 

It is maintained that Jesus was clothed with a 
twofold nature while on earth ; that he was both God 
and man, and that as long as he remained on earth 
he assumed all the limitations of man. It is not 
claimed, however, that he had a double conscious- 
ness. The idea of two natures in one person is 
highly illogical. His own conscious self must have 
been the same, whether in heaven or on earth. It 
could not have been otherwise, else he as God and 
he as man could not have been the same person, but 



164 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

two entirely distinct persons. By coming on earth 
and assuming a physical body, we can well under- 
stand that he may have assumed the physical limita- 
tions of man and lost the attribute of omnipotence, 
but the divine attribute of omniscience he could 
never lose without becoming an entirely distinct per- 
son in his conscious self. What a being once knows 
can never be obliterated, unless, of course, thru dis- 
ease. What Jesus knew while in heaven he could 
not have forgotten while on earth. 

A man may be bereft of power, position and 
wealth so as to make a great change in his life, yet 
his spiritual nature and attributes, his conscious self, 
will be the same, no matter how great the change in 
his physical life. By coming on earth and assuming 
man's physical body, as already stated, Jesus may 
have assumed all the physical limitations of man, 
but his psychical being could not change without 
becoming quite a different and distinct person. He 
could not surrender his former knowledge. If he 
was omniscient in heaven, he must have been om- 
niscient while on earth, and yet there were a number 
of things that he professed he did not know. 

We are distinctly told in Luke that the child Jesus 
grew in knowledge and that as he became older he 
advanced both in wisdom and stature. In place of 
having the unlimited knowledge of a Divine Being, 
the Gospel of Luke tells us that his knowledge grad- 
ually increased the same as it would in any youth. 

We are told the personality of Jesus is a mystery 
that the limited mind of man cannot fathom, yet the 
acknowledgment of mystery does not imply belief in 
contradictions. That Jesus, a constituent part of the 



GOD OR MAN 165 

Godhead with knowledge that is infinite in extent, 
should for a time while on earth have had his knowl- 
edge limited within human bounds and yet be the 
same conscious self, is an absolute contradiction. 
He could not at the same time have been conscious 
of knowing all things and of not knowing all things. 
It is absurd to think that he should have been pos- 
sessed of a mind, while on earth, that was constantly 
oscillating between the finitude of the human and the 
infinitude of the divine. The Jesus of the Gospels 
pictured to us as man and the Jesus of the Gospels 
pictured to us as part of the Godhead are entirely dis- 
tinct and could not possibly have been one and the 
same personality. Man he undoubtedly was. Tradi- 
tion later made him God. 

Altho many of the teachings of Jesus imply that 
he was no more than man, others as reported in the 
Gospels plainly imply that he was divine. How can 
this be accounted for? We must remember that his 
words were not taken down at the time they were 
spoken, that they were not placed in writing until 30 
or more years afterward, and that even then they 
were written down in a language different from that 
in which they were originally spoken. It is very evi- 
dent that his teachings have not been preserved to 
us in the very same words in which they were 
spoken. The Gospels themselves furnish evidence of 
this. The wording of the Lord's Prayer, which one 
should think would have been preserved word for 
word, is quite different in Luke from what it is in 
Matthew. The words spoken at the celebration of 
the Lord's Supper are not the same in Matthew, 



166 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

Mark, or Luke. His severe condemnation of the 
Pharisees is clothed in different words in Luke from 
what it is in Matthew. Being that there are these 
variances in the different reports of his teachings, 
notwithstanding that their import is substantially 
the same in all of them, we can well understand that 
after the belief began to prevail that he was divine, 
part of his teachings may gradually have been modi- 
fied so as to have them conform with that belief. 
This could well have occurred without any intention 
to deceive on the part of those who edited the Gos- 
pels or made copies of them. 

Another important fact to remember in this con- 
nection is that the conception of the Messiah as held 
by Jesus was quite different from that subsequently 
accepted and held by the Christian church. Jesus 
believed himself to be the Messiah, selected by Je- 
hovah, in the sense that he was to be the reformer 
and saviour of his own people. Believing himself to 
be the chosen instrument of the Jewish God Je- 
hovah, he at times used expressions which would 
necessarily imply his divinity when viewed from the 
standpoint of such who held the Christian conception 
of the Messiah. 

We sometimes hear it said that Jesus must have 
been either divine or an impostor. If he had repre- 
sented himself to be all that in later years was be- 
lieved of him, there would be much reason for saying 
that he must have been one or the other. However, 
outside of believing himself to be the Jewish Mes- 
siah, chosen as such by Jehovah, he made no preten- 
sions of any kind. A more sincere or perfect man 



GOD OR MAN 167 

than he never lived. No man had taught as lofty 
truths before his time. 

In almost every age there lived a man who in his 
ideals and his attainments far surpassed his fellow- 
men, appearing as a bright luminary dimming all 
other stars around him. Jesus far excelled in spiritual 
thought and deed, as did Shakespere in poetry, Plato 
in philosophy, or our own Washington and Lincoln 
in true statesmanship. Jesus was not the first or 
only man who was believed to be divine. It was the 
custom in the early days to deify those who far ex- 
celled their fellow-men. Had a Washington or a 
Lincoln lived in those times, they would have been 
worshipped as gods within a century after they had 
passed from earth. It was no fault of Jesus, it was to 
his credit, that he was deified and made One with 
God soon after he had passed away. We truly be- 
lieve that if his people at any time in his life had 
attempted to worship him as God, he would have 
done as did Paul and Barnabas when the people of 
Lystra were fain to worship them as gods, he would 
have become horrified and would have rent hia 
clothes (Acts 14:14). 

Those who are professing the so-called orthodox 
faith may not realize to what extent they are violat- 
ing Sacred Scripture by worshipping Jesus as God or 
part of the Godhead. In the first of the Ten Com- 
mandments God is represented as declaring, 'T am 
Jehovah thy God, thou shalt have no other gods 
before me." Nothing is here said of the Godhead 
consisting of parts. All are eliminated, parts or 
wholes, save One. In Isaiah 45 :22 we read : "I am 
God, there is none else." In Mark 12 :32 it is stated : 



168 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

"God is One, there is no other but He/' And yet, in 
our hymns, in our prayers, in our various church 
rituals, Jesus seemingly comes first and God has 
fallen quite into the background. Jesus-worship has 
in large measure been crowding out worship of God. 

We have heard it said, "If you take away Jesus, 
our divine Saviour, we have nothing tangible to 
cling to in our worship. In order that they might 
have something tangible to cling to, is the very thing 
that caused primitive people to worship idols and 
brought on idolatry. There is no need of doing 
away with Jesus. He is the greatest and best teacher 
we have. He is our ideal of perfection. We should 
strive to follow his precepts. But we believe that 
we are making a most serious mistake to worship 
him as God. 

The belief in Jesus as our God or part of the 
Godhead, obscures and mystifies that simple and 
beautiful life he lived. It makes him a mysterious 
being whom somehow we can't rightly consider as 
either God or man. It places him beyond the range 
of human sympathies. His example becomes a delu- 
sion. How can we hope to measure up to the 
Omnipotent? It robs us of the noblest example of 
manhood the world has ever known. It gives us a 
God disguised as man, who is not living the real life 
of a human soul, but is acting a part in the great 
drama of life. It clothes him with a life that is 
insincere. If he be the Infinite and Almighty, his 
temptations and suflferings could not have been real. 
His prayers could not have been real. 



GOD OR MAN 169 

On the other hand, if Jesus was a man like all of 
us, his prayers at once become full of meaning, full 
of purpose and significance. He makes our prob- 
lems of life the same as his own. We can sympathize 
with his trials and sufferings. He fills us with inspi- 
ration and courage to emulate his example. What 
he has been is a type of what we all may hope to 
reach. He becomes for us truly, "the way, the truth 
and the life." 

As One with God, his life on earth appears pitiful 
and thwarted in its purposes ; but as a man, we can- 
not find words to express the grandeur and greatness 
of his life on earth. As Deity he fades away into a 
shadowy myth, as a man he is the grandest and best 
who ever lived, "the topmost, finest flower on the 
tree of our great humanity." 

We presume we will be charged, the same as have 
been all others of like conviction, with attempting to 
tear down Christianity and giving nothing in return. 
We are simply trying to tear down hurtful dogmas 
that grew up in a dark and credulous age, dogmas 
which have lifted up and placed the Nazarene by 
the side of our God, dividing between them the honor 
and worship which belong to our God alone, with the 
result that it has divided Christendom into disagree- 
ing sects and factions and has caused thousands of 
men and women to keep outside of the church. And 
is there nothing left? All that is strictly essential to 
Christianity still remains. Among the chief requi- 
sites for our salvation Jesus mentions repentance for 
our sins, right living, obedience to and love of God 
as our Father, and he lays particular stress on service 



170 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

to our fellow-men. Whatsoever we do to help the 
hungry, the naked, the sick, or those in prison, we 
are told, we do it for our God. Not at any time 
did Jesus claim our worship of him as one of the 
alleged Triune God, nor did he claim or even inti- 
mate that our salvation depends on our faith in the 
washing away of our sins by his shed-blood. 



CHAPTER VI. 



Conclusion. 

The belief in God is well-nigh universal, but the 
conception of Him varies very materially. We find 
all shades of opinion held as to His character and 
attributes. 

The deist believes that God is distinct from the 
world, entirely separated from it, and consequently 
denies that there is a divine providence governing 
the affairs of men. 

The theist differs from the deist in that he believes 
that God sustains a personal relation to his creatures. 
He neither affirms nor denies the doctrines of 
Christianity. 

The Christian believes in divine providence, the 
divine inspiration of the Bible and in the doctrines of 
the Trinity and the vicarious atonement. A man 
may be a theist and not be a Christian, but he cannot 
be a Christian without being a theist. 

The Unitarian believes that Jesus of Nazareth was 
a great and good man, of wonderful personality and 
possessed of the elements of divinity so far as it is 
possible for man to possess them, but does not 
believe in the doctrines of the Trinity and of the 
blood atonement. He likewise believes that the 
Bible was written by devout and saintly men, but 
that it is not of divine inspiration in the sense as held 
by the Christians, and is therefore not infallible. 

All the beHefs thus far named regard God as a per- 
sonal moral being, distinct from the universe, of 



172 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

which He is the creator and ruler. The pantheist is 
in a class by himself. He does not regard God as a 
personal being. He believes that God and the uni- 
verse are identical, or that God is the only substance 
of which the material universe and man are mere 
manifestations. 

The agnostic as a rule believes in God, a Superior 
Power, but doesn't say whether in a theistic or pan- 
theistic sense. The agnostic in effect says : "God 
may be all the Christians believe He is, but it is inca- 
pable of proof; I don't believe it, I don't disbelieve 
it, I simply don't know." 

Atheism is purely a negative belief. The term has 
usually been applied to those who dissented from the 
then prevalent belief. Max Miiller in one of his lec- 
tures says: *'The early Christians were called 
atheists because they did not believe as the Greeks 
believed, nor as the Jews believed. Spinoza was 
called an atheist because his concept of God was 
wider than that of Jehovah, and the Reformers were 
called atheists because they would not deify the 
mother of Christ or worship the saints." The infidel, 
like the atheist, is a man without faith. He differs 
from an atheist in that he rejects the distinctive doc- 
trines of only some particular religion. 

The only belief there is which says there is no 
God is materialism. The elementary substance com- 
posing the universe, which the pantheist calls God, 
the materialist names simply matter. He claims that 
from matter in motion has been evolved all that 
exists. He denies that there exists in man an imma- 
terial substance which alone is conscious, distinct 
and separable from the body, claiming that "what 



CONCLUSION 173 

we know as psychical phenomena in man and other 
animals are to be interpreted, in an ultimate analysis, 
as simply the peculiar aspect which is assumed by 
certain enormously complicated motions of mat 
ter." Mind cannot communicate with mind save 
thru the medium of matter. We have no knowledge 
of mind existing independently of body. So far as 
we know the psychical cannot exist without the 
physical, but the physical can exist without the 
psychical. Matter and the motions of matter, con- 
tinues the materialist, make up the sum total of 
existence. 

The materialist may pride himself on his knowl- 
edge and his ability to resolve things into their 
elements, but where does he get his ability, his 
power of knowing from? It is impossible for him to 
account for the faculties of the mind, such as mem- 
ory, reason, judgment and experience. Material that 
moves or changes always takes the path of least 
resistance, it does not take that path which judgment 
or experience teaches is the better path. It knows 
nothing of these powers, nor can it account for them. 
Materialism can in no way account for the conscious 
self in man, or for the genesis of conscious life. 

Everywhere thruout the universe we see thought 
and design and back of it surely there must be a 
Thinker big enough to be the source of it all. We 
well know the materialist claims that the doctrine of 
evolution does away with all evidence of design and 
that what was formerly believed to show adaptation 
of means to a preconceived end can now easily be 
explained from natural causes which do not imply 
intelligence. We are free to admit that what one 



174 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

time were considered evidences of design can now 
be explained from natural causes, but this is true only 
to a limited extent. Back of it all is a teleology that 
cannot be accounted for from mere natural causes. 
Look where we may in the natural world, we see 
order and system and well defined purpose that can- 
not possibly be the result of an irrational power 
working at random chance. How could so delicate 
and intricate an organ as the eye, for example, have 
been produced by mere blind force. How can we 
account for conscious thought and reason being 
here? The product created certainly cannot be 
greater, more intelligent and more rational than the 
Power that creates. The existence of reason neces- 
sarily implies a rational Creator. As has been well 
said : "From a rational humanity and a rational uni- 
verse, constituting one rational system, we infer a 
rational God. There can be no other inference." 

We must remember that evolution never created 
anything. It simply has discovered the orderly 
method used by our God in the process of life's devel- 
opment. It cannot account for the origin of life. 
The materialist claims that life is inherent in mat- 
ter and that it was originally produced in its very 
simplest form by what is termed spontaneous gen- 
eration. But biological science has shown that it 
requires life to produce life, or that there is no living 
thing that has not descended from pre-existing life. 
Furthermore, our earth is claimed by scientists to 
have been originally a fiery mass of nebulous matter 
and that it took hundreds of years for our planet to 
cool and condense sufficiently before it was capable 
of sustaining life. If life is inherent in matter, every 



CONCLUSION 175 

germ of life contained in the matter composing this 
earth must have been destroyed a thousand times 
during the long period that the earth was in its fiery 
molten state. 

Our God is a personal being and not simply an 
unconsciously active and creative Force of nature, 
mindless and thoughtless. He hears, He sees, He 
determines. Man himself is the best proof that God 
is a personal being, for man is a person endowed 
with reason and self-consciousness and the creature 
certainly cannot be greater than his Creator. 

We necessarily can know very little of the nature 
and character of God. The finite cannot comprehend 
the infinite. He differs from us in that He is a 
spiritual being. Our present sphere of life is con- 
fined to a very small corner in the boundless world 
around us. However, we have every reason to believe 
that our God is a benevolent being, and that every- 
thing in this world is intended for our ultimate 
good. There is a great deal of evil and suffering in 
the world, it is true, but may they not serve a very 
useful and necessary purpose? In order for man to 
develop into a moral being, it was necessary that he 
be given a large share of personal freedom. He must 
have the powder to become immoral, else he cannot 
choose and determine to become moral. If he were 
incapable of sin, he would be incapable of virtue. If 
there were no evil, there could be no merit in being 
good. Evil must exist in order for man to develop 
character and become morally strong. All the per- 
fection he attains is due to successful battling against 
evil. Pain ministers to our good, the same as does 
evil. It serves as a warning, a beneficent guide, 



176 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

whenever there is something wrong with our phys- 
ical bodies. Sorrow is a wise teacher, affliction often- 
times a blessing, suffering a means of moral educa- 
tion. Without both evil and suffering there could 
have been no progressive development in man. And 
while there is evil and suffering, there is so very 
much more good in this world. We would enjoy the 
good less than half as much and would fail to appre- 
ciate it, if all were good. It is true, too, that much 
of the existing evil is of man's own making and a 
necessary consequence of his being endowed with 
free will. Much of the evil we find in the world is 
simply the abuse of what in its place is right and 
proper. Intemperance in drinking and eating is an 
evil of this kind, so is the improper indulgence of the 
passions. In order to support himself and those 
dependent on him, it is meet and proper for man to 
acquire property by honest work and effort. It is the 
abuse of this right that results in theft, robbery and 
even murder. War with all the misery that follows 
in its wake is almost invariably caused by the abuse 
of man's powers, which are so necessary for his 
development when rightly used. 

We need but look around us and see how much has 
been done, not blindly but with an evident purpose, 
for our sustenance, health, comfort, enjoyment and 
progress, and, realizing that even the evil and suffer- 
ing in this world are intended for our ultimate good, 
we can come to no other just conclusion than that 
there is a benevolent God above us. 

We believe that human life does not end with the 
grave, that there is a hereafter. This has been the 



CONCLUSION 177 

prevailing belief among men from the very first, even 
while man was still in a savage state. So universal 
has it been that the belief appears to be part of man's 
nature and implanted in his very being. What has 
been believed in all ages and by all races of men 
must be true, for this is the only way we can account 
for the universal prevalence of such belief. Further- 
more, what is implanted in man's very nature has 
been implanted there by God, who implants no lies, 
who in no way misleads or deceives. 

We cannot fail to realize that success, honor and 
happiness in this life have not in all cases been dealt 
out to men according to their just deserts. We see 
many a good man suffer from no fault of his own, 
while we see others, whom we know to be base and 
unworthy, surrounded with every comfort and enjoy- 
ment. If God is just, and we know He is, there must 
be a future life to square things, to justify the seem- 
ing inequalities of this life. We believe we will be 
thankful in the next world for any suffering we here 
endured, which at the time we thought we did not 
deserve. Many a worthy man who is now filling one 
of the humblest vocations in life will probably be 
filled with gratitude in the next world that in this 
world he did not belong to the idle rich. 

We believe in a future life because of the evident 
superiority of the spiritual nature of man over his 
physical. We all realize that there is something 
worth living for which the things of this earth do not 
satisfy. We cannot fail to see the incompleteness of 
this life to satisfy all of man's spiritual powers and 
desires. We believe in a future life because of the 
wholesome effect such belief has on human effort 



178 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

and character; it consoles the sorrowing, it encour- 
ages us in our trials, it inspires us to all that is pure 
and worthy. 

A strong argument in favor of the future life is the 
law of conservation. All the scientists agree that it 
is impossible to destroy anything. Nothing that 
exists ever perishes. It simply changes its form. 
We see a dewdrop on a blade of grass totally dis- 
appear, and yet it still exists in the form of vapor. A 
fire burns up a log of wood. It does not destroy the 
log. It simply reduces it back to its elements. Man 
we are told sprung from the dust of the ground and 
back to the ground he goes again at death. His 
physical body certainly does. But man does not con- 
sist alone of clay. There is something in him quite 
distinct from his corporal body. His conscious self, 
the rational and spiritual part of him, clay cannot 
produce. The physical body does not become extinct 
after death. It simply changes its form, like the 
dewdrop on a blade of grass. Nor, by virtue of the 
same law, does the conscious element in man become 
extinct at death. For his rational and spiritual self 
it is simply the dawn of another life. 

The great Creator of the universe took many cen- 
turies to create man and to develop him to what he 
is. Does man become extinct with death ? Does all 
God's work go for naught? We may well believe 
that the present life is simply a life of preparation 
and training and that our God has use for us for all 
time somewhere in this boundless universe, or He 
would not have created us in the first place. 

When a man enters one of our extensive manufac- 
turing plants and is conducted into the compartment 



CONCLUSION 179 

wherein the power of the plant is being transmitted 
to its many different sections, all that he sees in this 
compartment is nothing but a vast and intricate 
series of shafts and belts and wheels of all sizes, one 
setting the other in motion and all moving with the 
utmost precision. If this should happen to be the 
first time he ever entered a manufacturing plant, it 
will appear to him that all of the work is being done 
by machinery and that very few employees are re- 
quired to keep it in operation. But as he is being 
conducted thru the various other sections of the 
plant, he becomes astounded at the very large num- 
ber of hands that are being necessarily employed in 
order to produce the manufactured product. 

We here on earth have as yet entered into but 
one compartment, so to speak, of this vast universe. 
All that we see appears to require no guiding or 
directing hands and is being operated by what we 
term natural laws. When the time comes that our 
vision becomes extended we may be astounded at 
the innumerable number of helping hands the great 
Ruler makes use of to conduct and operate this 
universe without limit or end. 

The next life will be a state of retribution. We 
cannot believe in a life of eternal hell and torment. 
It is altogether unreasonable. It is degrading to our 
God even to think it. He, loving and merciful, 
could not possibly inflict so outrageously severe, 
cruel and endless a punishment. But while He is 
loving and merciful. He is also just and there can 
be no question but that those who here lead idle and 
immoral lives will meet with their just deserts in the 



180 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

next world, also that those who lead useful and 
worthy lives will be amply rewarded. All indica- 
tions go to show that we are here on probation, that 
this is a life of preparation and training for our 
duties in the life to come, where we will meet with 
promotion or degradation, happiness or disappoint- 
ment, according as we deserve. 

Where our paths of duty lie it is not difficult for us 
to determine. Whenever we err, it isn't usually be- 
cause of a mistake of judgment, but because we do 
not follow what our best judgment dictates. We do 
well to remember that the Bible has guided and 
strengthened many of our l^est and most worthy men 
and has been the inspiration of their most noble 
deeds. We cannot impress on our minds too deeply 
how detrimental to our interests it is to make pleas- 
ure and amusement our principal aim in life, also 
how detrimental to our interests is every effort on 
our part to acquire wealth without earning it by hard 
work and the practice of economy. The rewards of 
a clean, moral and helpful life are beyond compare 
with anything that wealth can purchase. We should 
at all times feel thankful and grateful to our Maker 
and Provider. Ingratitude is one of the basest of 
sins. Shame on the man who feels that ungrateful 
to neglect getting on his knees at night before retir- 
ing to thank God for all that he has reason to be 
thankful for. Communion with the Almighty thru 
prayer encourages us to all that is worthy and uplift- 
ing. Parents sadly neglect their duty who fail regu- 
larly to send their children to the Sunday school of 
one of our churches. They there learn much that is 
good and helpful to them in after life. Many a child 



CONCLUSION 181 

in his mature years has brought shame and sorrow 
on the heads of his parents because of their neglect 
of this duty. Many a man about to commit a crime 
has been saved from doing so by a sudden awakening 
of conscience caused by the inner prompting of 
something he had learned while a boy at Sunday 
school. 

Every man and woman should belong to a Chris- 
tian church. No organization has ever accomplished 
as much good as has the church. We may not 
believe in all its creeds, but this is not essential. 
Christianity, if it follows the precepts of its great 
founder, is not a doctrine but a life, not the reception 
of a system of dogmas but a sincere effort to serve 
God and our fellow-men. No organization, however 
good, is perfect. The church was founded on solid 
rock, or it would not have survived till now, but we 
must remember that it was organized in the dark 
days of superstition and what more could we have 
expected than that some superstitious beliefs would 
naturally grow up with it, beliefs that are not essen- 
tial to its life and beliefs that its founder evidently 
knew nothing about. The great task of the church 
today is to rid itself of these ancient and fanatic 
beliefs and doctrines. 

In its early formative period the church was quite 
progressive. It discarded the non-essentials and 
reformed the abuses that had crept into the religious 
worship of the Jews. This progressive spirit it soon 
lost, however, because the belief in divine revelation 
gradually came to be the accepted belief. Its creeds 
and doctrines had been divinely revealed or were 
directly founded on the revealed word, as it was 



182 VITAL TO OUR RELIGION 

thought, therefore they could not be changed or 
improved. Century after century passed and the 
world was making wonderful progress along all 
other lines of human effort, but there was no change 
or improvement in the doctrines of the church. And 
yet the Christian religion, notwithstanding its anti- 
quated dogmas, continually grew stronger and 
became a wonderful factor in the world's progress, 
simply by reason of the most excellent teachings of 
its founder. In this enlightened age, however, the 
Christian church is too severely handicapped. It 
has lost its hold. Just about half of the people that 
ought to be within its fold are on the outside. Many 
that still belong to it are mere nominal members. It 
will not again become the power for good that it is 
capable of, till it discards the doctrines of the Trinity 
and the blood atonement and the old view of 
revelation. 

We fully realize that many a good Christian 
believes that if we take away his faith in the shed 
blood of his Saviour as his sole hope for salvation in 
the next world, we are practically taking away all 
that there is of his religion. However, when he dis- 
cards this, his faith and hope, he virtually discards 
only the selfish part of his religion, his anxiety about 
the salvation of self. "Let the morrow take care of 
itself," was meant to be taken more particularly in a 
spiritual sense. A clean and useful life will avail us 
of much more saving grace than will mere faith. Let 
us follow the Nazarene not as our Saviour and God, 
but as our teacher and guide. He himself taught us 
to worship God, to worship no substitute, no trio of 
Gods, but solely God, as our Father. Isn't it out of 



CONCLUSION 183 

place for us to worship Jesus as "The only begotten 
Son," when he frequently declared that all of us who 
do His will are the sons of God. We do not need a 
mediator or intercessor. The Nazarene taught that 
our Father in heaven is more near to us even than is 
the father on earth to his children, that He is more 
ready to forgive us, if we are penitent, and more 
ready and willing to overlook our failings and short- 
comings than are our earthly parents. 

In place of marching forward under the banner of 
the cross, we would do well to emblaze our standard 
with two inscriptions that in the main embody all 
that Jesus of Nazareth taught — at the top the 
scription, ''The Fatherhood of God and The Broth- 
erhood of Men," and underneath in letters almost as 
large, "Whatsoever We Sow That Shall We Also 
Reap." 



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